Vol. 11 No. 7 (July 2001) pp. 336-338.

LAW IN OUR LIVES: AN INTRODUCTION by David O. Friedrichs. Los Angeles: Roxbury Publishing Company, 2001. 377 pp. Cloth $53.95. ISBN: 1-891487-41-8.

Reviewed by Linda S. Maule, Department of Political Science, Indiana State University.

The purpose of LAW IN OUR LIVES: AN INTRODUCTION is to provide readers and specifically students in Law and Society courses with an interdisciplinary framework for understanding the law and its relationship to society. Friedrichs intends for the text to introduce the reader "to the vast, rich literature on law and society, in its many layers and diverse dimensions" (p. xiii). In the foreword of the text, John Paul Ryan submits that textbooks in the subfield of law and society are rare. In part, this is because scholars within the subfield have been resistant to texts and are more apt to rely upon narratives, case studies, biographies, anthologies, and novels. Moreover, most works by law and society scholars that could be used as textbooks are now out of print. Friedrichs intends to fill this gap by offering a textbook that characterizes the law as a "many-hued, multi-faceted, often complex and contradictory" subject (p. 2). An "interactive" view of the relationship between law and society is the foundation for the book. According to this approach, "law and society have some unique and independent dimensions, but they also interact on many levels, with reciprocal influences" (p. 5).

This review of LAW IN OUR LIVES was crafted at the same time that I was teaching a Civil Rights and Civil Liberties course, as well as constructing a syllabus for a Judicial Process class. As a result, I have assessed the text first in terms of its usefulness as a supplement to public law courses and second in terms of its accessibility to students.

With respect to the former, while the text is intended for a Law and Society course, political science instructors can use it conceivably as a supplement for any number of public law courses. The chapters are written in such a way that instructors can rearrange them to fit the flow of a particular class or use only selected chapters. The chapters on the "The Legal Profession" and "Legal Institutions and Processes" would nicely complement the reading in a Judicial Process class; the chapter on "Comparative and Historical Approaches to the Law and Society" would enhance a comparative courts course; and the chapters on "Law, Justice, and the Moral Order" and "Jurisprudence and the Study of Law" would benefit students in an introductory constitutional law course, a civil rights and civil liberties course, or an introductory course on jurisprudence.

The chapters are not overly long, approximately twenty to thirty pages. However, a fair amount of information and detail is provided in each chapter. This is both a strength of the text, as well as a potential weakness. Friedrichs is successful at introducing students to the vast and varied literature on the law but often this introduction is cursory and by definition lacking in depth.

Nonetheless, throughout the chapters, Friedrichs does an excellent job of defining or describing concepts, giving a visual representation of those concepts, and then giving real world examples of how concepts might be applied. For instance, Friedrichs's genealogy of the schools of jurisprudence (Figure 4.1, p. 102) would be a useful visual aid when helping students to understand the relationships between legal formalism, legal realism, sociological jurisprudence, and critical legal studies. Similarly, Friedrichs's example of David Cash, the young man who watched his friend sexually assault and then strangle a seven year old girl, but was not found to be legally culpable in the girl's death (Box 3.3, p. 65) is an excellent tool for helping students to understand the difference between legal duty and moral duty.

With respect to whether students will find the text to be accessible, LAW AND OUR LIVES is plainly written and students should find it reasonably straightforward to read. Additionally, as mentioned above, it is well organized. Student should have little difficulty in discerning the overarching themes as well as the subcomponents of those themes. Moreover, Friedrichs appears to have written the text with an understanding that students have different learning styles. As a result he includes both written and visual explanations, as well as both abstract and concrete examples. In my opinion, any student who reads the book will take with them Friedrichs's most important message "Law is all over. Law is everywhere. Law is an enduring presence in our lives."

I only had a few concerns about the text and none of them outweigh the ways in which the text could enhance any number of public law courses. First, since Friedrichs does an excellent job presenting the law as a complex multidimensional subject, I was somewhat disconcerted over his discussion in Chapter 2 of the terms activism and restraint. According to Friedrichs, "first there is judicial restraint, which is typically regarded as a conservative judicial philosophy" and then there is judicial activism "which is most commonly associated with liberals" (pp. 48, 49). While it is true, that the average citizen may tend to view judicial restraint as a conservative approach and judicial activism as a liberal approach, I diligently strive to get my students to not equate activism and restraint with specific political ideologies. In the above discussion, Friedrichs makes no effort to rectify this common misconception. Although later in Chapter 4, he does discuss LOCHNER V. NEW YORK (1905) as an example of where a "predominantly conservative" Court used natural law principles to nullify state laws limiting the number of hours in an employee's workday, he does not recognize this court as being an activist court.

Second, I was somewhat disappointed in Friedrichs's discussion about the ways in which studies in political science inform our understanding of law and legal phenomenon (Chapter 5, p. 106). On Friedrichs's behalf it is important to note that he does say that his review will be brief. Nonetheless, I was struck by the fact that many of his citations were from the 1970s and 1980s and that he failed to make any reference to the neo-institutional approach to the study of the law-an approach that is informed by the discipline of sociology. In the same chapter, however, he presents a well-developed discussion of the origins of the socio-legal perspective.

Lastly, while Friedrich includes in the chapter on the "Legal Profession" a section that examines women in the legal profession, he only offers a brief blurb about the presence of (or lack thereof) ethnic and racial minorities in the legal profession. However, Friedrichs's discussion of race-related discrimination is far more thorough. He also nicely explicates critical race theory in his discussion of critical legal studies (pp. 94-95).

The above critiques do not take away from the overall contribution of the book. Friedrichs's best chapters are the ones that cover "The Law and Society Movement," "Legal Culture and Legal Behavior" and the "Law in Flux." He is clearly an expert in the socio-legal approach and this text is clearly a welcome addition to the subfield of Law and Society. Moreover, instructors teaching any number of public law course would find this text to be excellent supplementary reading for their course.

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Copyright 2001 by the author, Linda S. Maule.