Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T04:36:17.936Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Fundamental Contradiction Redux? Liberty, Coercion, and American Legal Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Paul Baumgardner
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In Liberty and Coercion: The Paradox of American Government from the Founding to the Present, Gary Gerstle offers an ambitious account of American legal development from our nation's founding up to the present day. In many ways, Gerstle's account is in keeping with the long scholarly tradition of linking legal liberalism with changes in American law and politics. However, Liberty and Coercion also calls to mind critical legal scholarship, most notably Duncan Kennedy's “The Structure of Blackstone's Commentaries” and the idea of the fundamental contradiction. After reconstructing Kennedy's central claims, I highlight how they actually undermine Liberty and Coercion and jeopardize the larger legal liberal tradition.

Type
Review Essay
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , Summer 2017 , pp. 924 - 942
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Ackerman, Bruce. 1991. We the People: Foundations. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Brandwein, Pam. 2011. Law and American Political Development. Annual Review of Law and Social Science 7:187–216.Google Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald. 1996. Freedom's Law: The Moral Reading of the American Constitution. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Feinman, Jay M. 1983. Critical Approaches to Contract Law. UCLA Law Review 30:829–60.Google Scholar
Frug, Gerald E. 1980. The City as a Legal Concept. Harvard Law Review 93:1057–1154.Google Scholar
Gabel, Peter, and Kennedy, Duncan. 1984. Roll Over Beethoven. Stanford Law Review 36:1–55.Google Scholar
Gerstle, Gary. 2015. Liberty and Coercion: The Paradox of American Government from the Founding to the Present. Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gordon, Robert W. 1982. New Developments in Legal Theory. In The Politics of Law: A Progressive Critique, ed. Kairys, David. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Gordon, Robert W. 1984. Critical Legal Histories. Stanford Law Review 36:57–125.Google Scholar
Hartz, Louis. 1955. The Liberal Tradition in America: An Interpretation of American Political Thought Since the Revolution. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company.Google Scholar
Herzog, Don. 1987. As Many as Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast. California Law Review 75:609–30.Google Scholar
Hutchinson, Allan C. 1989. Critical Legal Studies, ed. Hutchinson, Allan C. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Kelman, Mark G. 1984. Trashing. Stanford Law Review, Stanford Law Review 36:293–348.Google Scholar
Kennedy, Duncan. 1979. The Structure of Blackstone's Commentaries. Buffalo Law Review 28:209–382.Google Scholar
Kersch, Ken I. 2004. Constructing Civil Liberties: Discontinuities in the Development of American Constitutional Law. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
King, Desmond. 2015. “Liberty and Coercion: The Paradox of American Government from the Founding to the Present,” by Gary Gerstle. Financial Times, December 11. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/07783e24-9e8e-11e5-8ce1-f6219b685d74.html (accessed December 15, 2016).Google Scholar
Klare, Karl E. 1981. Labor Law as Ideology: Toward a New Historiography of Collective Bargaining Law. Berkeley Journal of Employment & Labor Law 4:450–82.Google Scholar
Menand, Louis. 1986. Radicalism for Yuppies. New Republic, March 17.Google Scholar
Novak, William J. 1996. The People's Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth‐Century America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Posner, Richard A. 2016. Divergent Paths: The Academy and the Judiciary. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Rogers M. 1993. Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal, and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in America. American Political Science Review 87:549–66.Google Scholar
White, G. Edward. 1984. The Inevitability of Critical Legal Studies. Stanford Law Review 36:649–72.Google Scholar
Baker v. Carr, 369 US 186 (1962).Google Scholar
Brown v. Board of Educ. of Topeka, 347 US 483 (1954).Google Scholar
Engel v. Vitale, 370 US 421 (1962).Google Scholar
Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 US 335 (1963).Google Scholar
Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 US 479 (1965).Google Scholar
Loving v. Virginia, 388 US 1 (1967).Google Scholar
Mapp v. Ohio, 367 US 643 (1961).Google Scholar
Miranda v. Arizona, 384 US 436 (1966).Google Scholar
Baker v. Carr, 369 US 186 (1962).Google Scholar
Brown v. Board of Educ. of Topeka, 347 US 483 (1954).Google Scholar
Engel v. Vitale, 370 US 421 (1962).Google Scholar
Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 US 335 (1963).Google Scholar
Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 US 479 (1965).Google Scholar
Loving v. Virginia, 388 US 1 (1967).Google Scholar
Mapp v. Ohio, 367 US 643 (1961).Google Scholar
Miranda v. Arizona, 384 US 436 (1966).Google Scholar