Capitalism And The Rule Of Law

A challenging and provocative book that contests the liberal assumption that the rule of law will go hand in hand with a transition to market-based economies and even democracy in East Asia. Using case studies from Hong Kong, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, Japan and Vietnam, the authors argue that the rule of law is in fact more likely to provide political elites with the means closely to control civil society. It is essential, therefore, to locate conceptions of judicial independence and the rule of law more generally within the ideological vocabulary of the state.

Against a backdrop of seven hundred years of bourgeois struggle, eminent lawyer and educator, Michael E. Tigar, develops a Marxist theory of law and jurisprudence based upon the Western experience. This well-researched and documented study traces the role of law and lawyers in the European bourgeoisies's conquest of power and in the process complements the analyses of such major figures as R.H. tawney and Max Weber. Using a wide frange of primary sources, Tigar demonstrates that the legal theory of insurgent bourgeoisie predated the Protestant Reformation and was a major ideological ingredient of the bourgeois revolution.

Recent high-profile corporate scandals—such as those involving Enron in the United States, Yukos in Russia, and Livedoor in Japan—demonstrate challenges to legal regulation of business practices in capitalist economies. Setting forth a new analytic framework for understanding these problems, Law and Capitalism examines such contemporary corporate governance crises in six countries, to shed light on the interaction of legal systems and economic change. This provocative book debunks the simplistic view of law’s instrumental function for financial market development and economic growth. Using comparative case studies that address the United States, China, Germany, Japan, Korea, and Russia, Curtis J. Milhaupt and Katharina Pistor argue that a disparate blend of legal and nonlegal mechanisms have supported economic growth around the world. Their groundbreaking findings show that law and markets evolve together in a “rolling relationship,” and legal systems, including those of the most successful economies, therefore differ significantly in their organizational characteristics. Innovative and insightful, Law and Capitalism will change the way lawyers, economists, policy makers, and business leaders think about legal regulation in an increasingly global market for capital and corporate governance.

One of his most important American studies of labor economics published in the twentieth century, this book outlines an evolutionary and behavioral theory of value based on data drawn from court decisions. Analyzing the meaning of reasonable value as defined by the courts, he finds that the answer is based on a notion of reasonable conduct. Expanding this point to encompass the habits and customs of social life, he shows that court decisions are based on customs that are powerful forces shaping the economic system. In an early review Wesley Mitchell declared that Commons [1862-1945] carried this "analysis further along his chosen line than any of his predecessors. Into our knowledge of capitalism he has incorporated a great body of new materials which no one else has used adequately.": American Economic Review, XIV (1924) 253.

In this innovative and exhaustive study, Steven A. Ramirez posits that the subprime mortgage crisis, as well as the global macroeconomic catastrophe it spawned, is traceable to a gross failure of law. The rule of law must appropriately channel and constrain the exercise of economic and political power. Used effectively, it ensures that economic opportunity isn’t limited to a small group of elites that enjoy growth at the expense of many, particularly those in vulnerable economic situations. In Lawless Capitalism, Ramirez calls for the rule of law to displace crony capitalism. Only through the rule of law, he argues, can capitalism be reconstructed.

"Breaking down into three distinct but related parts, it enters first into a study of the sociology of law. For its starting point this section contends that the law is shaped and reshaped by ever-changing material structures in society. Simultaneously the law works back on these structures to reinforce and conserve them. This materialist thesis is substantiated by an analysis of legal developments in a series of political fields: the development of penal law, financial law and labour protection law amongst others. A close scrutiny of the social organization of the 'legal superstructure', including an amusing and telling analysis of the modes of behaviour of those at the summit of the legal profession, concludes the first section. The dependence of law on the material structure of society cannot be satisfactorily accounted for, however, without also examining the relationship between the law and other systems of ideas, and between those ideas and the social formation in which they appear. Accordingly the central part of this book considers also religion, art and science. The author distinguishes between 'superconstructing' or conserving idea systems and those which enter into a truly dialectical relationship with the material structure to produce a new totality. He argues that in the late capitalist social formation the law is superconstructing whereas science has a dialectical relationship with the world. It remains, however, a political question whether or not dialectical ideas systems are desirable, that is, repression-abolishing. In the final section Mathiesen identifies reform or revolution as a false dichotomy which must be transcended. These chapters are aimed at revitalizing a flagging radical political movement through coherent and cogent discussion of organization and political strategy. In this part of the book the author developes further the notion of the 'unfinished political movement', first conceived in his earlier work The Politics of Abolition (Martin Robertson, 1974). This volume has direct relevance to a broad field of social and political scientists and workers. In particular it should be read by sociologists, social workers, criminologists, lawyers and law students. It will also be of value as text material for courses in the sociology of law and jurisprudence." -- Backcover.

Are Thomas Piketty’s analyses of inequality on target? Where should researchers go from here in exploring the ideas he pushed to the forefront of global conversation? In After Piketty, a cast of economists and other social scientists tackle these questions in dialogue with Piketty, in what is sure to be a much-debated book in its own right.