Lawrence Friedman's "Law in America"

Read: July 2, 2011

I found this book in the Short History series tucked in a corner of a great used bookstore in Providence. It was something of an impulse pick-up, my thoughts going something like, "you're interested in this, but should a) probably learn to like American studies more in general and b) know more, and maybe even find out if you're less interested than a preparing law school applicant should be." That, and it was $5.

I've taken a couple of shallow-interest level introduction to law in America-type seminars, and attended a couple of discussions/lectures, so my knowledge on this topic should only be considered basic. I can't speak, therefore, to the book's comprehensiveness - I can't list topics it should have discussed or big important cases it omitted. I can say that, speaking as something of a novice, the book carefully maintained the balance between comprehensiveness and detail. Friedman opens with an anecdote from his teaching experience - at the start of every semester, he picks up the paper on his way to class and then he begins his lecture by picking random articles in this fresh-off-the-press newspaper and demonstrating what elements of law play into this or that story. The point being the obvious conclusion that law permeates all aspects of our lives, especially those aspects we consider newsworthy.

After this introduction, Friedman divides his task into broad-sweeping categories: law in the colonial period (probably my expected favorite); economy and the law in the 19th century; family, race, and the law; crime and punishment; the 20th century and the administrative-welfare state; and law in the 21st century. The chapters proceed topically but also chronologically, to a degree. The third chapter mostly focuses on the relationship between the law and the economy in the boom-and-bust of industrial development, but it also flashes forward to the 20th and the 21st centuries and how the law relates to the economy throughout American history.

I found Friedman's content to be well-chosen and well-explained. I didn't encounter any explanations of the legal history behind the current state of affairs (for example the state of prisons after the war on drugs) that was new or unexpected, but it was enlightening simply as a result of the careful way he introduced topics and connections between laws and their repercussions. My greatest complaint with Friedman is that he has appalling grammar - obsessively using semi-colons when they were unnecessary or leaving sentences as subordinate clauses when simple punctuation could have solved his dilemma. After a bit, I could ignore it and focus on the content, which was worth it.