Law's Allure
How Law Shapes, Constrains, Saves, and Kills Politics

Law's Allure explains how, when, and why America's reliance on legal rules and judicial decisions shapes, constrains, saves, and sometimes even kills politics.

Gordon Silverstein (Author)

9780521721080, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 14 May 2009

334 pages, 7 b/w illus.
22.4 x 15 x 2.8 cm, 0.44 kg

"Gordon Silverstein, a political scientist at Berkeley, has written a fine book about the “juridification” of American politics—the resort to Courts to settle issues that the political process, through electoral action, persuasion, bargaining and compromise, might have resolved...He does not take a simple view, falling prey to a one-dimensional judgment of which Branch is overreaching or displaced from its natural functions."
-Bob Bauer, Chair of the Political Law Group of Perkins Coie LLP

Judicial and political power are inextricably linked in America, but by the time John Roberts and Samuel Alito joined the Supreme Court, that link seemed more important, more significant, and more pervasive than ever before. From war powers to abortion, from tobacco to integration, from the environment to campaign finance, Americans increasingly turn away from the political tools of negotiation, bargaining, and persuasion to embrace what they have come to believe is a more effective, more efficient, and even more just world of formal rules, automated procedures, litigation, and judicial decision-making. Using more than ten controversial policy case studies, Law's Allure: How Law Shapes, Constrains, Saves, and Kills Politics draws a roadmap to help politicians, litigators, judges, policy advocates, and those who study them understand the motives and incentives that encourage efforts to legalize, formalize, and judicialize the political process and American public policy, as well as the risks and rewards these choices can generate.

Introduction: law's allure and American politics
Part I. Law's Allure: Why, and Why Now, and Why it Matters: 1. Law's allure: motives, incentives, patterns, and process
2. Why now? The expansion and acceleration of law's allure
3. Why it matters: law is different - a theory of precedent
Part II. Law's Allure: Patterns, Process, and Cautionary Tales: 4. Poverty and abortion: the risks and rewards of a judicial strategy
5. Environmental regulation: a constructive process
6. Campaign finance: a de-constructive process
7. When the court says yes - and no: the special prosecutor, budget control, and line item vetoes
8. When the court is reluctant to intervene: war powers
Part III. Law's Allure: Costs and Consequences: 9. Tobacco: the promise and peril of law's allure
Conclusion: law's allure and American politics: for better - and worse.

Subject Areas: Constitutional & administrative law [LND], Public international law [LBB], International law [LB], International relations [JPS], Politics & government [JP]