The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life (Chicago Series in Law and Society)

Why do some people not hesitate to call the police to quiet a barking dog in the middle of the night, while others accept the pain and losses associated with defective products, unsuccesful surgery, and discrimination? Patricia Ewick and Susan Silbey collected accounts of the law from more than four hundred people of diverse backgrounds in order to explore the different ways that people use and experience it. Their fascinating and original study identifies three common narratives of law that are captured in the stories people tell. One narrative is based on an idea of the law as magisterial and remote. Another views the law as a game with rules that can be manipulated to one's advantage. A third narrative describes the law as an arbitrary power that is actively resisted. Drawing on these extensive case studies, Ewick and Silbey present individual experiences interwoven with an analysis that charts a coherent and compelling theory of legality. A groundbreaking study of law and narrative, The Common Place of Law depicts the institution as it is lived: strange and familiar, imperfect and ordinary, and at the center of daily life.

Politics & Social Sciences

Ewick, Patricia

Silbey, Susan S.

Sociology

University of Chicago Press

Why do some people not hesitate to call the police to quiet a barking dog in the middle of the night, while others accept the pain and losses associated with defective products, unsuccesful surgery, and discrimination? Patricia Ewick and Susan Silbey collected accounts of the law from more than four hundred people of diverse backgrounds in order to explore the different ways that people use and experience it. Their fascinating and original study identifies three common narratives of law that are captured in the stories people tell. One narrative is based on an idea of the law as magisterial and remote. Another views the law as a game with rules that can be manipulated to one's advantage. A third narrative describes the law as an arbitrary power that is actively resisted. Drawing on these extensive case studies, Ewick and Silbey present individual experiences interwoven with an analysis that charts a coherent and compelling theory of legality. A groundbreaking study of law and narrative, The Common Place of Law depicts the institution as it is lived: strange and familiar, imperfect and ordinary, and at the center of daily life.

Social Sciences

Beyond Betrayal: The Priest Sex Abuse Crisis, the Voice of the Faithful, and the Process of Collective Identity

In 2002, the national spotlight fell on Boston’s archdiocese, where decades of rampant sexual misconduct from priests—and the church’s systematic cover-ups—were exposed by reporters from the Boston Globe. The sordid and tragic stories of abuse and secrecy led many to leave the church outright and others to rekindle their faith and deny any suggestions of institutional wrongdoing. But a number of Catholics vowed to find a middle ground between these two extremes: keeping their faith while simultaneously working to change the church for the better. Beyond Betrayal charts a nationwide identity shift through the story of one chapter of Voice of the Faithful (VOTF), an organization founded in the scandal’s aftermath. VOTF had three goals: helping survivors of abuse; supporting priests who were either innocent or took risky public stands against the wrongdoers; and pursuing a broad set of structural changes in the church. Patricia Ewick and Marc W. Steinberg follow two years in the life of one of the longest-lived and most active chapters of VOTF, whose thwarted early efforts at ecclesiastical reform led them to realize that before they could change the Catholic Church, they had to change themselves. The shaping of their collective identity is at the heart of Beyond Betrayal, an ethnographic portrait of how one group reimagined their place within an institutional order and forged new ideas of faith in the wake of widespread distrust.

Steinberg, Marc W.

In 2002, the national spotlight fell on Boston’s archdiocese, where decades of rampant sexual misconduct from priests—and the church’s systematic cover-ups—were exposed by reporters from the Boston Globe. The sordid and tragic stories of abuse and secrecy led many to leave the church outright and others to rekindle their faith and deny any suggestions of institutional wrongdoing. But a number of Catholics vowed to find a middle ground between these two extremes: keeping their faith while simultaneously working to change the church for the better. Beyond Betrayal charts a nationwide identity shift through the story of one chapter of Voice of the Faithful (VOTF), an organization founded in the scandal’s aftermath. VOTF had three goals: helping survivors of abuse; supporting priests who were either innocent or took risky public stands against the wrongdoers; and pursuing a broad set of structural changes in the church. Patricia Ewick and Marc W. Steinberg follow two years in the life of one of the longest-lived and most active chapters of VOTF, whose thwarted early efforts at ecclesiastical reform led them to realize that before they could change the Catholic Church, they had to change themselves. The shaping of their collective identity is at the heart of Beyond Betrayal, an ethnographic portrait of how one group reimagined their place within an institutional order and forged new ideas of faith in the wake of widespread distrust.

This volume of Studies in Law, Politics, and Society presents a diverse array of articles by an interdisciplinary and international group of scholars. Their work spans the social sciences, humanities, and law. It examines new perspectives on the relationship of law and values and race and the law. The articles published here exemplify the exciting and innovative work now being done in interdisciplinary legal scholarship. TABLE OF CONTENTS: List of contributors; Law and Values: Interpretive freedom and divine law: early rabbinic renderings of divine justice (C. Halberstam); Rawls' law of peoples: an expansion of the prioritization of political over religious values (E. Carpenter); Post modernity and the fading of individual responsibility (J. Krapp); Race in Law; Passing phantasms/sanctioning perfomativities: (re)reading white masculinity in Rhinelander v. Rhine lander (N. Hers); Tortious race, race torts: hate speech, intentional infliction, and the problem of harm (P.L. Rivers); Before or against the law? Citizens' legal beliefs and experiences as death penalty jurors (B. Steiner).

Studies in Law, Politics and Society (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, 20)

Literature & Fiction

Sarat, Austin

History & Criticism

Emerald Publishing Limited

From the Gospel of Matthew to numerous US Supreme Court justices, many literary and legal sources have observed that how a society metes out punishment reveals core truths about its character. The Punitive Imagination is a collection of essays that engages and contributes to debates about the purposes and meanings of punishment in the United States. The Punitive Imagination examines some of the critical assumptions that frame America's approach to punishment. It explores questions such as: · What is the place of concern for human dignity in our prevailing ideologies of punishment? · Can we justly punish the socially disadvantaged? · What assumptions about persons, social institutions, and the ordering of social space provide the basis for American punitiveness? · Who, if anyone, can be held responsible for excessively punitive criminal sentences? · How does punishment depend on prevailing views of free will, responsibility, desert, blameworthiness? · Where/how are those views subject to challenge in our punitive practices? As Sarat posits in his introduction, the way a society punishes demonstrates its commitment to standards of judgment and justice, its distinctive views of blame and responsibility, its understandings of mercy and forgiveness, and its particular ways of responding to evil. He goes on to discuss the history of punishment in the United States and what it reveals about assumptions made about persons that “undergird” the American system of punishment. The five additional contributors to The Punitive Imagination seek to illuminate what American practices of punishment tell us about who we are as a nation. Synthesizing cultural, sociological, philosophical, and legal perspectives, they offer a distinctive take on the meaning of punishment in America.

The Punitive Imagination: Law, Justice, and Responsibility

Legal History

University Alabama Press

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Books by Ewick, Patricia

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ewick, Patricia. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life (Chicago Series in Law and Society)

The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life (Chicago Series in Law and Society)

Beyond Betrayal: The Priest Sex Abuse Crisis, the Voice of the Faithful, and the Process of Collective Identity

Beyond Betrayal: The Priest Sex Abuse Crisis, the Voice of the Faithful, and the Process of Collective Identity

Studies in Law, Politics and Society (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, 20)

The Punitive Imagination: Law, Justice, and Responsibility