Consequences : the impact of law and its complexity / W. A. Bogart.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A timely and erudite investigation of the impact of law on societies, and how this excessive reliance on law, particularly litigation, has generated difficulties in achieving consensus regarding issues of domestic policy.

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Bogart examines the consequences of law for society and explores the debates about how law influences and interacts with society. Although this empirically based study examines a vast literature on the impact of law, the larger theme is normative, assessing the value of using the law as a solution for complex social, political, and economic problems. The author first documents the expansion of the role of law in modern societies (especially the US, which he regards as an outlier, overly dependent on law) and then proceeds to organize and examine systematically the disparate literature on its consequences--the deterrent function of some laws and the impact of others. Bogart covers a lot of ground: criminal sanctions, regulation, torts-as-social policy, and antidiscrimination law. He also provides focused examination of the challenges presented by several important policy issues: capital punishment, regulation of smoking, environmental law, regulation of pornography, and combating racial discrimination in the US. The author believes that the US provides a cautionary tale for other countries: the US is drowning in law and is hopeless; do not emulate it. For socio-legal scholars interested in the impact of law, and for lawyers and policy makers interested in the continuing debate about the "litigation explosion" in Canada, the US, and elsewhere. M. M. Feeley University of California, Berkeley