Author: Brian Z. Tamanaha File Type: pdf The contemporary U.S. legal culture is marked by ubiquitous battles among various groups attempting to seize control of the law and wield it against others in pursuit of their particular agenda. This battle takes place in administrative, legislative, and judicial arenas at both the state and federal levels. This book identifies the underlying source of these battles in the spread of the instrumental view of law - the idea that law is purely a means to an end - in a context of sharp disagreement over the social good. It traces the rise of the instrumental view of law in the course of the past two centuries, then demonstrates the pervasiveness of this view of law and its implications within the contemporary legal culture, and ends by showing the various ways in which seeing law in purely instrumental terms threatens to corrode the rule of law.ReviewBrian Tamanahas Law as a Means to an End is something very rare--a book that has the potential to change thinking about the law in fundamental ways. The book accomplishes three substantial tasks with admirable brevity, erudition, and clarity. First, it traces the history of legal instrumentalism in Nineteenth and Twentieth century jurisprudence and legal practice--a compelling story that illuminates the origins of our most basic assumptions about law. Second, it traces the pervasive influence of instrumentalist thinking in contemporary legal thought--acutely diagnosing the intellectual underpinnings of phenomena as diverse as cause lawyering and the law and economics movement in the legal academy. Third, it makes a compelling argument that the rise of instrumentalism has a fundamentally corrosive effect on the rule of law. This is not just an important book--it is THE important book of legal theory for this decade. Law as a Means to an End is superb. --Lawrence Solum, John E. Cribbet Professor of Law, University of Illinois College of LawThe great scholar Grant Gilmore once asked in the title of a fascinating book, Is Contract Dead? and went on to answer, yes. Brian Tamanaha does him one better. In this book he asks, Is Law Dead? His answer almost. Law, he reports, is in danger of succumbing to instrumentalism and as such losing its vitality. Much of modern legal scholarship seeks to make law a branch of applied economics. This book pushes against that movement, as well as many other related realist movements. Whether one agrees or disagrees with Tamanaha, he or she will be wiser after having read this fine book. --Malcolm M. Feeley, Claire Sanders Clements Deans Professor, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at BerkeleyBrian Tamanaha sounds a firebell in the night. He shows how the most progressive modern approaches to law, by undermining beliefs in its objectivity and formal rationality, and its rootedness in natural or customary standards of right conduct, have fatally undermined its claims to restrain power-seeking or serve the common good. Law is now seen simply as an instrument -- not as a limit on greed and power, but a means by which interests pursue their own selfish ends. And its not only interest-groups and their lawyers, but judges and jurists, who have signed on to an instrumentalism that challenges the very ideas of the rule of law and the public interest. Tamanaha is not a nostalgic romantic. He does not think the old days can or should be recovered. He does not tell us what to do. But he illuminates our predicament with succinct history, clear-headed observation, and unflinchingly bleak analysis. --Robert W. Gordon, Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and Legal History, Yale UniversityTaken as a whole, Tamanahas book makes a significant contribution to the scholarly understanding of the rule of law in American jurisprudence....Tamanahas book provides a superb overview of the emergence of instrumentalism as the primary perspective on law in contemporary America. The evidence he marshals to support this conclusion is impressive, leaving little doubt as to the validity of his assertions...Law as a Means to an End is an outstanding treatment of an important scholarly question with profound normative implications for American society. --Paul M. Collins, The Law and Politics Book Review...In Law as a Means to an End, Tamanaha argues that the instrumental view of law, coupled with a general breakdown in our ability to reach a cencensus about which ends law should serve, poses a serious risk to the rule of law... --Robert T. Miller, Villanova University School of law, FIRST THINGSBook DescriptionDrawing upon legal history, legal theory, and legal sociology, this book presents an intellectual history of the U.S. legal culture which elaborates on the various developments that have led to and structure the present worrisome legal-political situation.

Author: Israel Shahak File Type: pdf Israel Shahak was a remarkable man. Born in the Warsaw ghetto and a survivor of Belsen, Shahak arrived in Israel in 1945. Brought up under Jewish Orthodoxy and Hebrew culture, he consistently opposed the expansion of the borders of Israel from 1967. In this extraordinary and highly acclaimed book, Shahak embarks on a provocative study of the extent to which the secular state of Israel has been shaped by religious orthodoxies of an invidious and potentially lethal nature. Drawing on the Talmud and rabbinical laws, Shahak argues that the roots of Jewish chauvinism and religious fanaticism must be understood before it is too late. Written from a humanitarian viewpoint by a Jewish scholar, this is a rare and highly controversial criticism of Israel that will both excite and disturb readers worldwide.