This is just an outstanding scholarly work which incorporates the history of the twenty-five year exegetical debate between Melanchthon and Agricola over poententia.

While Agricola sees this as nothing more than the work of the gospel which led the sinner to love the righteousness of Christ, Melanchthon continued to contend for the movement of law to gospel in contrition/justification won the day then, and properly so, as Wengert substantiates.

Luther's role is significant, as he was so prone to do, he had in mind the common man's view, so although he could sense that poententia brought about not only fear and terror of God but also love of righteousness, he would not settle to make anyone (let alone the laity) have to make this discretion.

In the escalating debate between the two catechisms and commentaries were the vehicles which carried the controversy on. Finally, due to historical circumstances which Wengert documents and presents articulately, Luther introduced his own, which clarified the argument in Philip's favor with his infamous, "we should fear, love and trust" as well as focus on the Decalog and its significant place in the Word's proclamation.

Wengert is to be highly commended on this excellent down work. It exhibits the highest in scholarship and research, presented in organized way to follow the debate's development with all its subtle sidebars and backgrounds.

Students of the Reformation will be well served by the study of this work. There is a great deal of Latin and German which remains untranslated. However, main points of his developing argument are not greatly affected. It is questionable how the layperson who holds no knowledge of the Confessions nor their background material would have much interest or skill in following this fascinating historical chapter.

I took Prof. Bonsignore's class on Law and the Multinational Corporation in the Fall of 1994. We were the first class to offically use this textbook. It does have a leftist bias, as does virtually everything to come out of UMass, but it is a rewarding read because it shows a perspective of American business that is not always reported. This is a good companion to Nader's No Contest

These guys have raised the bar in the field of Ethnomodology. Also, Dr. Manzo is pretty cute.

I mostly use this book as a drawing and painting reference. It includes lots of great pictures of notorious crimanals and the lawmen who busted them. It also includes lots of great pictures of infamous trials. It spans from Wyatt Earp to the Iran-Contra hearings. You gotta love that picture of "Machine Gun" Kelly being led out of the courtroom by six lawmen all with rifles pointed at him. WoW! Overall this book is a keeper for the cofee table. It's a pity that it's out of print.

After the, equally magnificient Laws of the Night, where you get to play the role of the Kindred, Whitewolf now publishes a live-action rpg where you get to stand in the shoes of the vampire hunters. The rules are simple and garantuee a lot of fun. Nobody should miss this masterpiece...

This is a Superb biography/autobiography of Clarksburg West Virginia native John W. Davis,a brilliant lawyer and politician who was the only West Virginian presidential Candidate who came close to the presidency losing to Calvin Coolege back in 1924.This is a very enjoyable must read book on the life and times of John W. Davis!

I am the author of Planet Law School: What You Need to Know Before You Go -- but Didn't Know to Ask. So, it might seem that John Delaney and I are competitors (and our books do have different publishers). But as I said in PLS, this book by Delaney is something every serious law student should get.

He presents beautiful examples of "case-parsing," which is what good legal analysis involves. In fact, he's brilliant, but without being flashy about it. To read his book is to rise above all the drudgery and the minutiae of the first-year of law school, and to see the beauty of what's involved in "Thinking Like a Lawyer." It is inspiring.

Yet, the book isn't some "ivory tower" fantasy on the Wonders of the Law. It's very down-to-earth, nitty-gritty, in the way you actually have to go about applying the law to the facts.

Too many prospective law school students are only interested in a "quickie" book that they kid themselves will help them adequately prepare for what lies ahead. They'll be sorry. Learning Legal Reasoning is NOT "Law School Lite." But it is a delight.

This is it, folks -- the point at which classical and modern liberalism began to diverge. Everybody in either camp is indebted, in one way or another, to the great Thomas Hill Green. And sooner or later, everybody in either camp will have to come to terms with him.

Now, in my own not entirely humble opinion, Green's criticisms of other liberal theorists are well-founded and he himself has gotten the philosophical foundations just about exactly right. Basically, his claim is that (my paraphrase) the source of our rights against one another, as well as the source of the state itself, is our possession of an ideal common end in which the well-being of each of us is coherently included.

He develops this account very painstakingly, and one of the joys of reading it is watching him make sense of Rousseau's tortured notion of the "general will." By the time Green is through rescuing this doctrine from Rousseau, it becomes something altogether respectable: that (my paraphrase again) there is an overarching ideal end at which our actions aim, and it is that end which we _would_ have if all of our present aims were thoroughly modified and informed by reflective reason.

I say "_would_ have" with some reservations, since for Green (as for Bosanquet and Blanshard, who followed him here) there is a clear sense in which we _really_ have this ideal end. But this point takes us afield into Green's metaphysics, which are better covered in his _Prolegomena to Ethics_.

As I said, this volume marks the watershed between classical and modern liberalism. Green is often associated with the "modern" side of the divide, but today's reader will be surprised to see just how "classical liberal" Green was (in, e.g., his opposition to paternalistic government and in a good many other respects). Why, heck, there are passages that could have been lifted from David Conway's _Classical Liberalism: The Unvanquished Ideal_.

It does seem, though, that in allowing a positive role for the governmental institutions of a geographically-demarcated State, he has started down the slippery slope to the modern welfare-warfare state. Like Hegel before him and like Bosanquet after him, Green usually means by "state," not the bureaucratic machinery of a territorial government, but the whole of society including _all_ of its "institutions of governance." But -- also like Hegel and Bosanquet -- he does not always keep these two things firmly distinguished, and at times he is clearly thinking specifically of the governmental institutions of a territorial nation-state rather than what some of us would call the "market."

He is also a bit unclear on the ground of "rights." W.D. Ross rightly takes him to task for this in _The Right and the Good_: Green writes on one page that we have _no_ rights until these are recognized by society, and then turns around and writes as though "society" is recognizing rights we _already_ have. To my mind Ross clearly has the better of the argument here, though the problem is not, I think, terribly hard to fix.

On the whole, then, it is probably no wonder that Green and his crowd set into motion -- whether inadvertently or otherwise -- a stream of "liberalism" that would eventually find a far, far larger role for the State than any that Green himself would have approved. But to my mind, these difficulties are removable excrescences, not the heart of his theory. (And it is also worth bearing in mind that Green provides moral grounds for _resisting_ the State: he acknowledges that no actual State is really ideal and, insofar as it falls short of the ideal, should be brought firmly into the service of our common end.)

The theory itself seems to me to be sound. In fact, despite the aforementioned disagreements and several others, I would nominate this volume as perhaps _the_ single greatest work on liberal political theory.

Again, at some point every "liberal" of any stripe will have to come to terms with Green's ideas (perhaps in highly mutated form). And if, with minor tweezing, Green's basic outlook is sound, it also -- suitably adjusted -- forms the proper basis for the classical-liberal commonwealth.

It therefore behooves classical liberals and libertarians to get the word directly from Green himself. Those other "liberals" aren't _entirely_ wrong.

Many clients and other non-lawyers believe that lawyers milk the legal system for every conceivable financial advantage. As an attorney in New York City for the past 7 1/2 years, I believe most attorneys are ethical, but a small percentage give the entire profession a bad name. Toothman and Ross' book details efforts by judges to punish the lazy, incompetent or unethical lawyer by disallowing fees while allowing diligent, competent and ethical lawyers to collect when a client seeks to avoid payment.

The opening chapters of the book focus on the unique nature of the attorney/client relationship and how this relationship impacts the allowable fee. As trusted advisor to the client, the attorney has an obligation to charge only a "reasonable" fee. The lawyer is not free to strike any deal with a client. This is becuase the client relies on an attorney not just to protect his rights in a litigation or transaction, but to properly define the scope of what needs to be done. The book goes through some examples where courts reviewed engagement letters and bills to judge whether the resulting fee was "reasonable."

The book also details a group of questionable billing practices. There are many creative ways in which some lawyers add dollar amounts to their bills. Among the billing practices discussed were charging clients for firm overhead, charging senior lawyer time for simple or clerical tasks, and charging a client for recycled work (i.e. work done for another client in a similar matter). Thankfully, most courts are not hesitant to clamp down on such abuses. The later portion of the book gives clients tips on how to manage fees and detect abuses, and lawyers advice on how to manage their cases to maximize productivity and avoid unethical billing practices.

My only modest criticism is that the authors spent less than two pages discussing class action fees.... Nevertheless, I highly recommend this book to lawyers and clients alike.

I need to know all about John R. Commons What did he do in all his life?, What was his best book? etc..