This book makes sense of the limits of "the rule of law," without giving up on The Law's importance. Cutting through the dream that "we have a government of laws, not of men," Kairys and his contributors demonstrate that The Law is not necessarily on the side of justice, fairness, or democracy. Today, perhaps more than at any time in the last 50 years, the supposedly neutrality of the system of laws has been compromised. In so many crucial areas -- such as the criminal "justice" system, the welfare state, civil rights and civil liberties, labor, women's rights, health, environment law, poverty, and many more -- this book helps us see how The Law is there to serve the powerholders, the "haves" of society, rather than the "have-nots." There is a lot here too about legal processes: about access to the system (and restrictions in people's access), about the legal rights of racial minorities, immigrants, workers, women, low-income people, and gays, and about the politics of policing.

Although highly critical of the present state of The Law, the writers here do not abandon the The Law as a zone where the struggle for justice, equality, and democracy goes on. Indeed they have written this book, in a sense, to redeem The Law as a tool for a true justice. Kairys and his collaborators want The Law truly to serve that cause, not merely to claim that it seeks justice when it so often does the reverse.

The book will be crucial for law students, critical thinkers, and real believers in democracy everywhere. It helps us think about what freedom really means.

I use this book in my Sociology of Law course. The essays in this book are wonderful for instructional purposes because they are simultaneously clear enough that people not firmly entrenched in the legal field can read them, yet rich in their content, exposing the complexities of law and society.

I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in law and society, and especially to instructors.