| Stewards of Democracy: Law as Public Profession Contributor(s): Carrington, Paul (Author) |
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ISBN: 0813368324 ISBN-13: 9780813368320 Publisher: Basic Books OUR PRICE: $36.10 Product Type: Hardcover Published: July 1999 Annotation: Stewards of Democracy beckons judges and lawyers to a professional tradition supportive of the institutions of self-government. It challenges the beliefs of many American judges, legal scholars, and law teachers that political decisions can often best be made by high courts who are independent of the citizens they purport to govern. Among those challenged to reconsider their roles are the Supreme Court of the United States, eminent legal scholars, and distinguished law schools, which reinforce one another in the belief that they know best how Americans should live. The careers of Thomas Cooley, Louis Brandeis, Ernst Freund, Learned Hand, and Byron White are considered as examples of the contrary tradition respectful of democracy as the source of the political, economic, and social stability required to sustain other valued rights. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Law | Legal Profession - Political Science | Law Enforcement |
| Dewey: 349.73 |
| LCCN: 99-20269 |
| Lexile Measure: 1730 |
| Series: New Perspectives on Law, Culture, and Society |
| Physical Information: 1.19" H x 6.42" W x 9.33" (1.25 lbs) 320 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Stewards of Democracy is a celebration of a moral tradition famously observed by Alexis de Tocqueville through the eyes of Francis Lieber, a Prussian emigr who in antebellum times wrote of political ethics, hermeneutics, and comparative constitutional law as aspects of the moral duties of American lawyers and judges. The duty of the profession unifying this tradition has been to nurture and protect the institutions of self-government on which depend the stability of our complex social order and the protection of all our legal rights. Thomas Cooley, perhaps the lawyer most respected by nineteenth century Americans, is presented as a primary exemplar of the dutiful tradition. Much of the book is an account of his career as judge, scholar, teacher, and founding chair of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Cooley's career was succeeded in the tradition by a trio of Progressives: Louis Brandeis, Ernst Freund, and Learned Hand, whose careers area also examined. Finally noted is the more recent career of Byron White.Carrington contends that the dutiful tradition marked by the careers of the five exemplars is threatened by the mutually reinforcing tendencies of the Supreme Court and other high courts, of highly respected legal scholars, of the most honored of our law schools, and of noted legal journalists, all of whom tend to work from the premise that political and moral judgments can best be made by an elite and imposed on a passive citizenry, a belief tending to fulfill itself. The result is a threatened suffocation of the political institutions commanding the loyalty and enduring support of citizens. The book concludes by suggesting possible causes for a future reversal of this long-term trend and the steps such a reversal might entail. |