Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T00:46:34.120Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Laws of Passion

Review products

Bandes Susan A., ed., The Passions of Law. New York: New York University Press, 2000. xv + 300 pages. $35.00 cloth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Francesca Polletta
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

As a sociologist, I have always been envious of legal scholars' license to prescribe. They not only elucidate the ideas and interests behind the law, the ways it is applied, and the problems it confronts. Unencumbered by social scientists' reticence, they also tell us how to do better. The scholars represented in The Passions of Law argue in no uncertain terms that feminists should not appeal to disgust in attacking pornography, that levying more stringent penalties on “hate crimes” unjustly punishes opinions, that we should admit vengefulness as a motive for punishment, and that a wrongdoer's remorse should mitigate his penalty. Of course, the authors describe, analyze, and explain as well as recommend, and they do so in shrewd and enlightening ways. They also occasionally disagree strongly with each other's prescriptions. Those who argue that disgust is bad, shaming is good, and vengefulness is meritorious are countered by those who argue the opposite.

Type
Review Essay
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , 2001 , pp. 467 - 493
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

1

Thanks to Edwin Amenta, Richard Blum, Frank Munger, and Helena Silverstein for valuable comments.

References

References

Brigham, John (1987) “Right, Rage, and Remedy: Forms of Law in Political Discourse,” 2 Studies in American Political Development 303–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bumiller, Kristin (1988) The Civil Rights Society: The Social Construction of Victims. Baltimore: John Hopkins.Google Scholar
Coltrane, Scott, & Hickman, Neal (1992) “The Rhetoric of Rights and Needs: Discourse in the Reform of Child Custody and Child Support Laws,” 39 Social Problems 400–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crenshaw, Kimberle Williams (1988) “Race, Reform, and Retrenchment: Transformation and Legitimation in Antidiscrimination Law,” 101 Harvard Law Rev. 1331–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, Monica J. (1993) “Stealing Away: Black Women, Outlaw Culture, and the Rhetoric of Rights,” 28 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Rev. 262–98.Google Scholar
Ewick, Patricia, & Silbey, Susan S. (1998) The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freeman, Alan (1988) “Racism, Rights, and the Quest for Equality of Opportunity: A Critical Legal Essay,” 23 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Rev. 295–392.Google Scholar
Fuller, Helen (1960) “We Are All So Very Happy,” New Republic (April 25) 13–14.Google Scholar
Gabel, Peter (1984) “The Phenomenology of Rights-Consciousness and the Pact of the Withdrawn Selves,” 62 Texas Law Rev. 1563–99.Google Scholar
Gabel, Peter, & Kennedy, Duncan (1983–84) “Roll Over Beethoven,” 36 Stanford Law Rev. 1–55.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Jeff, Jasper, James M. & Polletta, Francesca, eds. (2001) Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Jennifer (1999) “The Campaign for the Unpaid Wages Prohibition Act: Latino Immigrants Change New York Wage Law,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Global Policy Program Working Paper No. 4. New York.Google Scholar
Gordon, Steven L. (1989) “The Socialization of Children's Emotions,” in Saarni, C. and Harris, P. L., eds., Children's Understanding of Emotion. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Gould, Deborah (2001) “‘Rock the Boat, Don't Rock the Boat, Baby’: Ambivalence, Emotions, and the Emergence of Militant AIDS Activism,” in Goodwin, J., Jasper, J. M. & Polletta, F., eds., Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Greenhouse, Carol J., Yngvesson, Barbara & Engel, David M. (1994) Law and Community in Three American Towns. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Groves, Julian McAllister (1995) “Learning to Feel: The Neglected Sociology of Social Movements,” 43 Sociological Review 435–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Groves, Julian McAllister (2001) “Animal Rights and the Politics of Emotion: Folk Constructions of Emotion in the Animal Rights Movement,” in Goodwin, J., Jasper, J. M. & Polletta, F., eds., Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Handler, Joel F. (1992) “A Reply,” 26 Law & Society Rev. 819–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horowitz, David (1996) “Rethinking Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique: Labor Union Radicalism and Feminism in Cold War America,” 48 American Quart. 1–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, Alan (1993) Explorations in Law and Society: Toward a Constitutive Theory of Law. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jaggar, Alison M. (1989) “Love and Knowledge: Emotion in Feminist Epistemology,” in Jaggar, A. M. & Bordo, S. R., eds., Gender/Body/Knowledge: Feminist Reconstructions of Being and Knowing. New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Jasper, James M. (1999) “Sentiments, Ideas, and Animals: Rights Talk and Animal Protection,” in Coclanis, P. A. & Bruchey, S. W., eds., Ideas, Ideologies, and Social Movements. Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Kelman, Mark (1987) A Guide to Critical Legal Studies. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Kessler, Mark (1990) “Legal Mobilization for Social Reform: Power and the Politics of Agenda Setting,” 24 Law & Society Rev. 121–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Massaro, Toni M. (1989) “Empathy, Legal Storytelling, and the Rule of Law,” 87 Michigan Law Rev. 2099–2127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McAdam, Doug, & Paulsen, Ronelle (1993) “Specifying the Relationship Between Social Ties and Activism,” 99 American J. of Sociology 640–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCann, Michael W. (1994) Rights at Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McCann, Michael W., & March, Tracey (1995) “Law and Everyday Forms of Resistance: A Socio-Political Assessment,” 15 Studies in Law, Politics, & Society 207–36.Google Scholar
Merry, Sally Engle (1990) Getting Justice and Getting Even: Legal Consciousness Among Working-Class Americans. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Polletta, Francesca (1998) “Legacies and Liabilities of an Insurgent Past: Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr., on the House and Senate Floor,” 22 Social Science History 479–512.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Polletta, Francesca (2000) “The Structural Context of Novel Rights Claims: Rights Innovation in the Southern Civil Rights Movement, 1961–1966,” 34 Law & Society Rev. 367–406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Polletta, Francesca (2001) “Plotting Protest: Storytelling in the 1960 Student Sit-In Movement,” in Davis, J., ed., Stories of Change: Narratives in Social Movements. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press.Google Scholar
Rhode, Deborah L. (1990) “Feminist Critical Theories,” 42 Stanford Law Rev. 617–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rollins, Judith (1985) Between Women: Domestics and Their Employers. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Sarat, Austin (1990) “‘... The Law Is All Over’: Power, Resistance, and the Legal Consciousness of the Welfare Poor,” 2 Yale J. of Law & Humanities 343–79.Google Scholar
Schneider, Elizabeth M. (1986) “The Dialectic of Rights and Politics: Perspectives from the Women's Rights Movement,” 61 New York Univ. Law Rev. 589–652.Google Scholar
Southern Regional Council Papers, 1944–1968, Microfilm. Ann Arbor: Univ. Microfilms, 1984.Google Scholar
Steinberg, Marc W. (1999) “The Talk and Back Talk of Collective Action: A Dialogic Analysis of Repertoires of Discourse among Nineteenth-Century English Cotton Spinners,” 105 American J. of Sociology 736–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Papers, 1959–1972 (1982) Microfilm. Sanford, NC: Microfilming Corporation of America.Google Scholar
Tushnet, Mark (1984) “An Essay on Rights,” 62 Texas Law Rev. 1363–1403.Google Scholar
Villmoare, Adelaide (1991) “Women, Differences, and Rights as Practices: An Interpretive Essay and a Proposal,” 25 Law & Society Rev. 385–410.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walzer, Michael (1960) “A Cup of Coffee and a Seat,” 7 Dissent 111–20.Google Scholar
White, Lucie E. (1987–88) “Mobilization on the Margins of the Lawsuit: Making Space for Clients to Speak,” XVI Rev. of Law & Social Change 535–64.Google Scholar
Whittier, Nancy (2001) “Emotional Strategies: The Collective Reconstruction and Display of Oppositional Emotions in the Movement against Child Sexual Abuse,” in Goodwin, J., Jasper, J. M. & Polletta, F., eds., Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Patricia J. (1987) “Alchemical Notes: Reconstructing Ideals from Deconstructed Rights,” 22 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Rev. 401–33.Google Scholar
Yngvesson, Barbara (1993) Virtuous Citizens, Disruptive Subjects: Order and Complaint in a New England Court. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar

Case Cited

Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 US 186 (1986).Google Scholar