Classics of Law & Society
This Series takes the best of classic law and society, legal history, and law works- often read by scholars, cited by students, and assigned to classes- and makes them easily available again, in a convenient form.
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David Garland’s classic Punishment and Welfare is Digitally Remastered,™ adding new preface by the author
First published in 1985, this classic of law and society scholarship continues to shape the research agenda of today’s sociology of punishment. It is now republished with a new Preface by the author. Punishment and Welfare explores the relation of punishment to politics, the historical formation and development of criminology, and the way in which penal reform grew out of the complex set of political projects that founded the modern welfare state. Its analyses powerfully illuminate many of the central problems of contemporary penal and welfare policy, showing how these problems grew out of political struggles and theoretical debates that occurred in the first years of the 20th century. In…
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Selznick’s Law, Society, and Industrial Justice, in 50th Anniversary, adds Foreword by Lauren Edelman
LAW, SOCIETY, AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE is a foundational study of workplace justice, still engaging and referenced a half-century after its original publication. The 50th Anniversary Edition adds an extensive, substantive Foreword by Berkeley’s Lauren Edelman. She writes that the book “remains important for how it conceptualizes law, for how it conceptualizes organizations, and for the theory Selznick offers regarding the moral evolution of organizations as they become ‘institutions,’ or living entities infused with values.” It is “a profound book for many reasons,” as she critically examines. Norms and values still matter in organizational governance – even in what amounts to “private government” – as this classic work reminds us. “Selznick’s…
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Calavita adds 2nd edition of her classic U.S. Immigration Law and the Control of Labor
Reagan’s 1986 immigration reform law offered a composite of contradictory measures: sanctions curtailed employment of undocumented workers while other programs enhanced labor supply. Immigration law today continues the theme of contradictions and unmet goals. But hasn’t it always been so? Examining a century of U.S. immigration laws, from the nation’s early stages of industrialization to enactment of the quota system, Calavita explores the hypocrisy, subtext, and racism permeating an unrelenting influx of European labor. Now in its second edition, this groundbreaking book offers a materialist theory of the state to explain the zigzaggingpolicies that alternately encouraged and ostensibly were meant to control the influx. The author adds a 2020 Preface…
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Thorsten Sellin’s Slavery and the Penal System is Digitally Remastered:™ Shows history of using slave labor as criminal sentence, invention of the treadmill
The classic and groundbreaking study of penal slavery throughout the ages is finally available again. Previously a rare book — despite the fact that it is widely quoted and cited by scholars in the field of sociology, penology, and criminology — this book can now be accessed easily worldwide and be assigned again to classes. Now in its fortieth anniversary edition, Sellin’s classic book adds a new Foreword by researcher Barry Krisberg at Berkeley, and incorporates changes the author originally planned for a second printing, provided to Quid Pro Books by the Special Collections Library at Penn and authorized by his family. Part of the Classics of Law & Society Series from…
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Meir Dan-Cohen’s 2nd edition of the recognized study Rights, Persons, and Organizations asks why corporations are legally persons
Corporations have legal rights, and so do many other large-scale organizations. But what does it mean to ascribe rights and “personhood” to such entities, and what is the rationale for doing so? These are central questions for an organizational society such as ours, and yet they have received consistently little attention in modern political and legal thought. The surface metaphor of treating corporations as persons with “rights” carries profound consequences — sometimes even reducing individual freedoms in light of the organization’s status. Especially after such recent Supreme Court decisions as Citizens United, this effect is as acute today as when this book was first written. Now in its Second Edition,…
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Messinger’s much-cited Strategies of Control is a Digitally Remastered™ Classic of Law & Society: in print and ebooks
This groundbreaking study of transitions and control in the California prison system has been extensively read, cited, and quoted in unpublished form—and is finally available worldwide. Already a compelling part of the canon of studies in penology, criminology, sociology, and organizational theory, this new edition of STRATEGIES OF CONTROL adds a 2016 foreword by Howard S. Becker and afterword by Jonathan Simon, both contributing substantive and meaningful views of this important work. Considered influential to two generations of scholars worldwide, Messinger’s thesis examining prison systems’ organization and reform—or in some ways, regression—is said to anticipate Erving Goffman’s and Michel Foucault’s writings on “total institutions” by many years, and raised themes that…
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Boyum & Mather’s classic Empirical Theories About Courts is Digitally Remastered:™ A foundational work in the field of trial courts
The classic and groundbreaking study of trial courts and other dispute processes — and foundational ways to think about researching them — is now available in a modern digital edition. It is edited by Professors Keith O. Boyum and Lynn Mather, and contains chapters from the leading theorists about courts and their research. Much cited and relevant today in how it frames the analysis of courts, this book’s new republication features an additional Introduction and Afterword by the editors, with updates, and anew Foreword by Christina L. Boyd. As Boyd writes, “For nearly all civil and criminal cases the traditional model of court as a judge-dominated, formal adversary process of…
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Galanter’s much-cited Why the Haves Come Out Ahead is now a book, adding new commentary
This is the fortieth anniversary edition of a classic of law and society, updated with extensive new commentary. Drawing a distinction between experienced “repeat players” and inexperienced “one shotters” in the U.S. judicial system, Marc Galanter establishes a recognized and applied model of how the structure of the legal system and an actor’s frequency of interaction with it can predict outcomes. Notwithstanding democratic institutions of governance and the “majestic equality” of the courts, the enactment and implementation of genuinely redistributive measures is a hard uphill struggle. In one of the most-cited essays in the legal literature, Galanter incisively demolishes the myth that courts are the prime equalizing force in American…
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Walter Murphy’s Congress and the Court is Digitally Remastered™ with New Foreword by Thomas Baker
Princeton political scientist Walter Murphy analyzed the role of Congress in trying to manage an activist Supreme Court at a time of seismic change in the law and evolving interplay between these powerful institutions. As the original dustjacket offered, this is a “first-rate assessment of the delicate balance of power between Congress and the Supreme Court as it affects the American political process.” The new republication of this classic work adds a 2014 Foreword by law professor Thomas Baker, who notes the continuing relevance of Murphy’s insights: “The principal object lesson he offers is that what happened in the 1950s happened before and will happen again, that separation of powers…
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Pritchett’s The Roosevelt Court is a classic of law & society, exploring decision-making on the Supreme Court over a decade
THE ROOSEVELT COURT is a brilliant analysis of Supreme Court decisions during a crucial decade in the Supreme Court’s history, by a political scientist “interested in the social and psychological origins of judicial attitudes and the influence of individual predilections on the development of law.” A much-cited classic of the Court and judicial decision-making from the point of view of social science and not just doctrine, this work is at last available in a convenient and well-formatted digital edition, and in new paperback too. The digital presentation includes active Contents, linked notes, and all tables and graphics from the original print editions. “One of the most informative, judicious, and illuminating…
