Legality and Democracy Contested Affinities

Democracy and the rule of law are commonly represented as complementary and indispensable components of the modern democratic state. Whatever the truth of this formulation, it conceals the competing claims of electoral and legal accountability that are the subject of this volume. Political, legal and social theorists have long debated these contending claims. Recent socio-legal scholarship has shed empirical light on the debate. Accordingly, this volume brings together some of the landmarks of the relevant theory, including the work of such scholars as H.L.A. Hart, Lon L. Fuller and Philip Selznick and incorporates current socio-legal scholarship by such leading figures as Malcolm Feeley, Robert Kagan, Michael McCann and David Nelken.

Contents: Series preface; Introduction. Rights, Legality and democracy: Rights: legal aspects, Michael McCann and Stuart Scheingold Classical Legality: Keeping Law Safe from Politics: Revisiting Fuller's critique of Hart-managerial control and the pathology of legal systems: the Hart-Weber nexus, James C. Ketchen; The forms and limits of adjudication, Lon L. Fuller; Sociology and natural law, Philip Selznick. Reconsidering the Classical Canon: Coping with Inequality: Why the 'haves' have come out ahead: speculations on the limits of legal change, Marc Galanter; Controlling official behavior in welfare administration, Joel Handler; The war on poverty: a civilian perspective, Edger S. Cahn and Jean C. Cahn; Public interest liberalism and the modern regulatory state, Michael W. McCann; Constitutional rights and social change: civil rights in perspective, Stuart A. Scheingold. The Case Against 'Adversarial Legalism': Reaffirming the Classical Canon: The passive virtues, Alexander M. Bickel; Decreeing organizational change; judicial supervision of public institutions, Donald L. Horowitz; Adversarial legalism and American government, Robert Kagan. In Defence of Politicization: 'Adversarial Legalism' Reconsidered: The passive-aggressive virtues: Cohens v. Virginia and the problematic establishment of judicial power, Mark Graber; The role of the judge in public law litigation, Abram Chayes; The prison conditions cases and the bureaucratization of American corrections: influences, impacts and implications, Malcolm M. Feeley and Van Swearingen; Legal mobilization and the politics of reform: lessons from school finance litigation in Kentucky, 1984-1995, Michael Paris; 25 years after Rodriguez: school finance litigation and the impact of the new judicial federalism, Douglas Reed. Legality, Equality and Democracy: Adversarial legalism: the American way of law, David Nelken; Index.

Stuart Scheingold is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Washington, USA. He edited a previous Ashgate volume: Politics, Crime Control and Culture (1997) and has most recently published books and articles on the politics of rights, on cause lawyers, and on the politics of crime and punishment. He is currently at work on a book about 20th century political novels.