Professor Glendon of the Harvard Law School is a rare voice of sanity, compassion and honesty in America's abortion debates. She is an especially rare voice within the legal academy. Glendon shows that America's abortion regime, set into place by the Supreme Court in its infamous Roe v. Wade ruling, is the most radical in the Western world. In the United States, the richest nation in the world, we have the least amount of legal protection for unborn children; to use Orwell's phrase, they are "unpersons" as far as our laws are concerned.

But Dr. Glendon's book is about much more than looking at comparative abortion laws. Glendon demonstrates that abortion laws are necessarily related to the provisions a society makes for vulnerable women and families facing difficult pregnancies. Glendon adopts a wholistic, communitarian-based approach to the issue of abortion, arguing that it is more a question of societal responsibilities than individual rights. Thus, the current rhetoric, especially popular on the "pro-choice" side, that posits a conflict of rights between mother and child, is very misguided ... and as we have witnessed, deadly to unborn children and damaging to the fabric of our society.

I believe Dr. Glendon's book represents a prophetic call to a new way of thinking about abortion, and our response to this tremendous national tragedy.

Mary Ann Glendon is among the most talented members of the faculty of the Harvard Law School, and this book is a detailed comparison of abortion and divorce laws in the major developed nations. Such a comparison leads to the conclusion that American law on these matters is the most extreme in the developed world. Glendon then argues that the peculiar extremity of our legal situation reflects the deficiencies of a constitutional order that places unprecedented importance on rights, a contention which is further developed in her book, Rights Talk. This book is very valuable in dispelling the notion that where we Americans stand with regard to abortion and divorce is simply consistent with the law of other Western nations.

Harvard Law prof Mary Ann Glendon has written a fine book on a theme near and dear to my heart: the joys of the common law and the need to return to it. It's been described as a bit short on solutions, but perhaps those critics don't know that common law generates solutions as it goes.

This book is in some ways a "prequel" to Deborah Rhode's excellent _In the Interests of Justice_. I highly recommend that anyone interested in one of them get the other one too.

Glendon, also the author of _Rights Talk_, includes some nice treats in this work. For one thing, there's a lot of gentle debunking of the view that law practice ever enjoyed a "golden age." Glendon has a keen awareness of the fact that this "golden age" was in fact an age of rich white people's old-boys clubs and the much-vaunted "professionalism" of the period had the effect (not entirely unintended) of keeping racial and religious minorities, as well as women, out of the profession altogether (or at least driving them into the less prestigious areas of the law).

She also has some important words on the (related) hypocrisy of the legal profession's opposition to "commercialism." Her own view is that genuine commercialism carries with it a commitment to honesty and fairness; the predominant view among the bar associations, at least, seems to be that when you're acting "commercially," anything goes. Those of us who want the legal profession to act professional would do well to heed Glendon here and stop denouncing the market for the sins of those who don't understand it.

There are also some engaging reminiscences about the late great Karl Llewellyn, one of the most prominent legal scholars of the twentieth century and chief architect of the Uniform Commercial Code. Glendon infects the reader, as she herself was infected, with Llewellyn's love of the common-law tradition and the power of judge-made law.

Nor have I exhausted everything this book has to offer. Suffice it to say, by way of conclusion, that Glendon turns in a nice analysis of the changes the legal profession has undergone over the last few decades.

A fine book all around, then -- and incidentally a nice companion to Philip Howard's _The Death of Common Sense_. Howard, too, would like to see a move away from the hyperregulatory state and toward the empowerment of the common-law judge; Glendon's book is complementary to his in some ways. Readers of one will probably enjoy the other.

Prof. Glendon provides a fresh look at the crisis of faith in the legal community through a survey of the recent history of the bar, the bench and the academy. "A Nation Under Lawyers" urges lawyers, judges and law professors alike to examine their consciences and try to appreciate the beauty of the lawyer's craft and the common law. Though the common law tradition is not perfect, Prof. Glendon suggests that it is the combined experience, understanding and judgment of many generations of jurists. Activist judges, critical legal theorists and disheartened practitioners would all do well to heed Prof. Glendon's words and find new heart in the never-ending work of building a stronger common law tradition. Written in a manner accessible to attorneys and non-attorneys alike, "A Nation Under Lawyers" provides a solid survey of recent academic and legal debates for every reader, but is especially helpful -- indeed, essential -- to every student contemplating a life in the law.

Professor Glendon vividly and lucidly elaborates the people and events whose obscure work yielded perhaps the single most important document of the second half of the 20th Century.

For those of us who are privileged to live under the blanket of freedom, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights might not be understood to be the beacon of hope and freedom that is has become to many millions around the world who live in conditions of extraordinary disadvantage. This book is a gift in that it provides with a detailed narrative of the places, people, and events which conspired to deliver the UDHR at a moment in history when it was so desperately needed.

Just over 300 pages and a big book at that full of the most interesting facts and for some of us reminders of how things used to be and how they got better under First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who was ahead of her time. A Stateswoman in my views.

It is a book that began in 1945 here in San Francisco California when delegates to the April gathering from fifty lands top found the UN and start an organization that would help tackle many of the problems that now faced post World War Two countries. The Allied leaders as is noted had agreed in principle on the need of an International organization to help prevent future aggression, assure stability of frontiers and provide a means to resolving disputes amongst nations with the most vigorous supporter being FDR himself. But it would be Harry Truman who would talk Mrs Roosevelt into the idea.

The Chapters cover The longing for freedom, the rocky start, every conceivable right, the philosophical elements, late nights in Geneva working out the details, being in the eye of a social and political hurricane, what happens while in the fall in Paris, how each nation got its say, the declaration of independence, hitting a deep freeze of thought and of nations and what this declaration has evolved into today.

The author is the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard and what she has written should be a must read for anyone who gives a damn about human rights and the genius and sainthoodness of our late First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and a reminder to young women what they too can accomplish.

Rights talk is ubiquitous in American culture; from the highest political office holder to the lowest convenience store clerk, people invoke rights, often in absurdly stark and overbroad forms, as a way of expressing their desires, interests, and moral and political views. Often such rights claims lead people to say things that are clearly false and/or absurd, such as that they have the right, without qualification, to do whatever they want whenever they want. This custom is made all the more curious by the fact that people seem to know so little about rights themselves. What are rights? Where do they come from? Who has what rights, and how can you tell? When posed with such questions even some rights theorists fall silent.

The curious nature of American rights talk has led an increasing number of people to reject the existence of rights altogether. Rights have, of late, come under serious sustained attack from a variety of quaters, and it's hard not to feel a little sympathy with such critiques. Talk to a guy who thinks you have an absolute sui generis right to own a sub-machine gun a few times, and you will begin to understand why Bentham called rights "nonsense on stilts." Still, rights, and rights talk, lay at the heart of our republic, as well as of the recent attempts to hold foreign dictators to universal moral standards. It would be most unfortunant if a concept that has done so much good in the world turned out to be incoherent.

According to Glendon's book, the problem it not with rights themselves, but with what she calls the "American rights dialect," the particular way in which we speak of rights here and now. She argues that contemporary American rights talk is separated both from the European tradition, and from the tradition of the founding fathers, not only in its simplicity, but also in its extreme individualism, absoluteness, insularity, and inarguability. American rights talk ignores the connections (logical and moral) that rights have with duties, it denies the social and communal aspects of people, and it rejects the need for rights to be limited according to various circumstances. In effect American rights discourse has become a parody of itself, leaving it vulnerable to attack from those who would deny rights altogether.

It's clear from Glendon's other works (e.g. A World Made New) that she does believe in rights. While this book is largely critical of rights talk in its current form, it should be viewed, I think, fundamentally as an attempt to restore rights to their proper place in our political framework, lest we get fed up with the whole thing and throw out baby with bathwater. For this reason I would recommend this book both to advocates and opponents of rights. The former will emerge from it with a fuller deeper understanding of how rights work, while the later may discover that there is more to rights than they had previously thought.

I very much enjoyed reading this book & I think I gained much from doing so. Although a lot of space is devoted by the author to anticipating & shooting down arguments those who don't agree with her might offer, she does get her points across rather well. She has a lot to say about the fact that lawyers & judges seem to love talking about rights while they have little to say about obligations. Some of the facts she reports are shocking to read & make it very easy to understand why so many people have so little respect for the legal profession. I must confess I had great difficulty in trying to paraphrase Ms Glendon's assertion, maybe because, as Ms Glendon explains, our court decisions entered a different world, so to speak, in the 1960s period. I strongly recommend the book for anyone interested in the humanities.

Glendon puts into perspective the overuse of the idea of individual "rights" and how the emphasis in our legal system not only leads to absurdity, but to the inability of society to discuss very real social problems.
As she puts it (I paraphrase) this discourse is based on the way few men, and fewer women, actually live. For we all live in a complex milieu of family and friends and neigbors, not in isolation.
I especially like her dissection of Rousseau's "primitive man" and how this idea has become the distorted, (again I paraphrase) insisting that when these philosophers discussed the freedom of the primitive man, they somehow neglected to realize that they never bothered to see how the primitive woman or child fit into his life--or into their own life.
This argument is the basis for communitarian ideas, not socialism.
And in an "either or" type argument too often seen in discussions of rights (society versus individual rights) she posits a "but": the idea of individual rights in a complex society where these things are balanced by others, not eliminated.

The book was edited in 1994 and does not reflect the latest changes in the law, especially European one (including Eastern Europe). In addition it is very dry. The best part of the book is the history of law development and description of judicial system in France, Germany and England. But thats it! Only West European law is reviewed; nothing about Islamic law, law of African countries (I would like to have brief description at least); the description of Russian law is laughable,no insight.

Bottom line, if you have a choice DO NOT buy it or buy a used one...