In Law and Class in America, a group of leading legal scholars reflect on the state of the law from the end of the Cold War to the present, grappling with a central question posed to them by Paul D. Carrington and Trina Jones: have recent legal reforms exacerbated class differences in America? In a substantive introduction, Carrington and Jones assert that legal changes from the late-20th century onward have been increasingly elitist and unconcerned with the lives of poor people having little access to the legal system. Contributors use this position as a springboard to review developments in their own particular fields and to assess whether or not legal decisions and processes have contributed to a widening gap between privileged and unprivileged people in this country. From antitrust and bankruptcy to tax and election law, the essays in this unique volume invite readers to reflect thoughtfully on socio-economic justice in the new century, and suggest that a lack of progressive reform in all areas of law may herald a form of undiagnosed class dominance reminiscent of America's Gilded Age. Contributors: Margaret A. Berger, M. Gregg Bloche, David L. Callies, Paul D. Carrington, Paul Y. K. Castle, Lance Compa, James D. Cox, Paula A. Franzese, Marc Galanter, Julius G. Getman, Lawrence O. Gostin, Joel F. Handler, Trina Jones, Thomas E. Kauper, Sanford Levinson, John Linehan, Joseph D. McNamara, Burt Neuborne, Jeffrey O'Connell, Judith Resnik, Richard L. Schmalbeck, Danielle Sarah Seiden, Richard E. Speidel, Gerald Torres, David M. Trubek, Elizabeth Warren, and Lawrence A. Zelenak.
Preface 1 Law Made in SkyboxesPart I : The Regress of Courts, Legislatures, and the Bar2 When (Some) Republican Justices Exhibited Concern for the Plight of the Poor3 Money and American Democracy 4 Contracting Civil Procedure 5 Skybox Lawyering Part II : Consequences6 Fair Pay for Chief Executive O?cers 7 The Antitrust "Revolution" and Small Business8 Residential Privilege9 The Declining Progressivity of the Federal Income Tax 10 Class War and the Estate TaxPart III : And Less for Those in the Cheap Seats11 Trade Law, Labor, and Global Inequality 12 Law at the Workplace13 Consumers and the American Contract System14 Congress and the Credit Industry15 The Misfortunes of the Family Farm 16 Health Law and the Broken Promise of Equity 17 The Elusive Goal of Equal Educational Opportunity 18 The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again?) of Accident Law19 Welfare Reform and Deform Part IV : The Hierarchy in Criminal Law20 Evidence Law to Protect the Civil Defendant, but Not the Accused 21 America's Misguided War on Drugs About the Contributors Index
