Legally Speaking: Contemporary American Culture and the Law

by Helle Porsdam

Since the founding of the republic, the law has come to make itself felt at every level of American society. Indeed, as Helle Porsdam argues, in a country with no monarchy or hereditary aristocracy and no established church, the law has become America's "civil religion," helping to form a collective national identity. According to Porsdam, what is distinctive about the role of law in the United States is not simply the prevalence of legal language and practice in everyday life, nor the fact that people go to court more often on more matters than do citizens of other countries. It is that Americans appeal to the law with a singular faith and hope deeply rooted in the culture. For all their complaints about excessive ligitiousness, greedy lawyers, and the shortcomings of the adversarial system, when conflicts occur, it is to jurists rather than to politicians or the clergy that Americans turn in their search for solutions. To demonstrate how thoroughly the ideal of law permeates American life, Porsdam looks at a wide variety of cultural evidence, from the novels of Scott Turow and Sara Paretsky to the television show "The People's Court." In each case she unveils and explores telling links between culture, self, and society--all forged by the law.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1558492089
• ISBN13: 9781558492080
• Release Date: July 1999
• Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

A persuasive case

In this book, Ms Porsdam attempts a difficult task: writing about aspects of the law in united states culture without being tiresome, overly technical, or shallow. She discusses the role (and rule) of law in the following areas: united states exceptionalism, literary works (Tom Wolfe, William Gaddis, Scott Turow, Margaret Atwood, Sara Paretsky), television drama and televised courtroom proceedings, and race and feminist issues.For the most part the writing is calm and even-handed, and the examples Porsdam chooses back up her argument that for united statesians the law is a secular religion, protecting every citizen. At the same time that it is a shield, it is also a sword, and this dual purpose, and the friction generated, is at the core of each chapter of this very readable book. Advocates for keeping the law as it is, and those who want to change it, are depicted as being aware of what it is, and wanting it to be something else (something they hope is better). These debates are far from dry matters - scholars talking to scholars - and the repercussions of both change and inertia are tangible and considerable.In many instances Porsdam has to encapsulate conflicting arguments (e.g., on the merits and weaknesses of usian feminism and french feminism) while also carrying her own point forward, which can be a tricky thing to do. Most times she succeeds, and manages to make a clear enough path through dense thickets of other people's prose for the reader to see her argument, as well as those of her sources.The book does suffer somewhat in the arguments surrounding the People's Court, and with television's legal dramas. Since television has brought highly sensational trials into the homes of so many, more recent events and programs could have been examined, to better understand the ways legal issues have entered the life of many united statesians.That is a weakness in an otherwise clear and concise work, a relatively short work which manages to make legal issues more immediate than one would think possible. This is not a book written in the obfuscatory prose some scholars and academics prefer; it is written for anyone interested in legal issues, and looking for a broad picture showing how people's view of the law is reflected in the cultural works being created in the u.s. today.