ISSN 1062-7421
Vol. 12 No. 1 (January 2002) pp. 64-66.

LAW AND THE WEB OF SOCIETY by Cynthia L. Cates and Wayne V. McIntosh. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2001. 237 pp. Paper. $29.95. ISBN: 0-87840-860-6.

Reviewed by Kate Greene, Department of Political Science, University of Southern Mississippi.

Reading and reviewing LAW AND THE WEB OF SOCIETY has been a joy and delight. Cates and McIntosh have written a super book. It is a fresh and
exciting approach to the study of law that exposes the banality of many Introduction to Law texts. It is a book that excites me and I believe will excite my students as we study the politics of law. Cates and McIntosh's book presents all the conventional law and politics/society material, but rather than presenting it in the timeworn approach of most texts, it is presented in the language and conceptual frameworks of the 21st century student, i.e., the "Web" and their very own (very important) personal lives.

As a student of feminist politics, I was quickly attracted to this book that uses the radical feminist metaphor of the web to examine the complexity of law (although Cates and McIntosh's metaphor is derived from the Worldwide Web). Also, I can hardly dislike a book that declares as one of its themes that the personal is the political (legal, historical, and social). Whether or not Cates and McIntosh are operating from a feminist perspective, LAW AND THE WEB OF SOCIETY is undoubtedly a text that has benefited from feminist analysis. Race, class, gender, and sexuality are always a part of the complex web and this book incorporates these variables throughout. In addition, there is an emphasis on connections and relationships as a way to understand politics. For those who still fear anything even slightly smacking of feminist, it should be noted that Cates and McIntosh are ideologically evenhanded in their presentation of the material.

LAW AND THE WEB OF SOCIETY is a study of the "webbed" relationship of law and society. According to Cates and McIntosh, the web of law and society
is both ubiquitous and ambivalent. It is ubiquitous because it is everywhere, at all times, and shapes and reflects us each from "our genesis in the embryonic fluid to our final resting place six feet under" (p. 3). It exists historically and it invades our everyday lives. The web is ambiguous because it is shaped and reflected by the conundrum of "ordered liberty," that is, the struggle to maintain order while maximizing liberty, freedom and autonomy. The book is then built around these conceptions. Part 1 (chapters 1-5) provides an introduction to the book's theme and then provides a general overview of law and society. Part 2 (chapters 6-9) examines many substantive areas of law (property, contracts, privacy, family law) in terms of the individual life cycle, our everyday relationships, and our identities.
Chapter 10 examines the web in terms of the larger political economy and the final chapter returns to the core themes of ubiquity and ambiguity.

LAW AND THE WEB OF SOCIETY succeeds in maintaining its focus on the web metaphor and the themes of

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ubiquity and ambiguity even as Part 1 (The Web of Law) covers the traditional introductory material such as the sources, types, and functions of law, U. S. legal history, the structure and process of the courts, and the various actors in the system. Chapter 3's exposition of the philosophical foundations of the U. S. political system is outstanding in that respect. In that chapter, Cates and McIntosh provide a beautiful articulation of Lockean liberalism and the philosophical debates of the constitutional convention through excellent storytelling and a weave of primary source material. Indeed, primary source material is not limited to this chapter. Cates and McIntosh utilize such material throughout the text. Thus, the students hear, among others, the voices of Locke, Hobbes, Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson, Henry,
de Tocqueville, Mark Twain, and various Supreme Courts.

Part 2 (Law and the Web of Life) is part of what makes this book different and fresh. Rather than presenting the substantive areas of law such as contracts, torts, privacy, and criminal law, Cates and McIntosh base their examination of the law on the individual lifecycle and "law and life ['s]. common and complex impetus-relationships" (p. 85). Chapter 6 (Law and Relationships) examines the definition of family, divorce, breach of promise to marry, intrafamily litigation, the right to procreate, same sex relationships, and abortion. Chapter 7 (Law and the Beginning of Life: Birth. Infancy and Childhood) concerns parentage (especially in light of new technology such as cloning), adoption, infancy, education (including topics such as civic socialization and sexual harassment), juvenile justice, and
adulthood. Chapter 8 (Law and Identity) addresses property in our selves (physical and reputational), privacy (a particularly nice discussion here), and group identity (race and Native Americans). Chapter 9 (Law and the End of Life) explores questions of old age, death and dying, capital punishment, and inheritance. The last chapter in this part (Law and Political Economy) moves the analysis from the individual to a collective analysis-that is, to the role of technological change in political economic development. Included in this chapter is a discussion of the contract clause of the Constitution, the legal status of corporations, the commerce clause, and the media.

The mix of history and contemporary issues in Part 2 should help make the subject matter interesting to students. The 21st century student seems most likely to be reached by linking the material to their actual and potential life experiences and this book should get their attention with issues such as sex (in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, cloning), drugs (pre-natal child abuse), violence (school shootings and capital punishment) and rock and roll (music/mp3 copyrights and obscenity). Yet, once it has their attention, Cates and McIntosh's metaphor of the web requires the students to explore the larger relational, social and economic
context of these personal issues as they play out in our collective struggles over ordered liberty.

Indeed, the true value of this text lies in its mix of the individual and the collective. Although Lockean liberalism may be the foundation of our political and legal system, the reality is that politics and law today require an expanded liberalism--a liberalism that values the autonomy of the individual without decontextualizing her and without ignoring the importance of relationships and connections. This book takes a look at the law with this in mind. The lonely, isolated autonomous individual does not exist in the real world of the law or

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in this text and students who learn the law in this way will have a more realistic view of their position in the world and of their rights.

This book's problems are mostly minor. First, Adolph Eichmann was not a Nazi camp commandant (p. 38). He was the S. S. bureaucrat who arranged and scheduled the trains that took Jews to the killing camps. The text also refers to U. S. Courts of Appeal as "Circuit Courts of Appeal" (p. 52). I the official name is simply the U. S. Courts of Appeal and should be referred to as such for consistency. Also, there is no discussion of rape or domestic violence, even though these topics are of great interest to my students and fit perfectly with the themes of the book. My last complaint is a generalized complaint that I have with all texts these days--I want real footnotes, not endnotes. Cates and McIntosh note excellent sources and provide interesting commentary in their note section, but it is unlikely to
be read by any students. With today's publishing technology, true footnotes should be easy enough.

Still, these are trivial points that do not detract from the fact that this book is beautifully written, has a sense of humor (not many texts make me laugh at loud), and consistently illustrates its themes as it explores the subject matter. Each chapter also provides a list of Internet links that allow the students to explore the subject matter more thoroughly with the World Wide Web. It also steadfastly highlights the links between different aspects of the web of law and society. Simply, it is a very good book.

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Copyright 2002 by the author, Kate Greene.