A Holistic Vision of the Socio-Legal Terrain

Tamanaha discusses Marc Galanter\u27s holistic vision of the socio-legal terrain. Galanter\u27s socio-legal vision has two central overlapping foci, and he always keeps an eye on each and on their interaction. The first focus is the official state legal system, which he examines from every conceivable angle: who becomes lawyers, how are they trained, how many lawyers are there, what are the circumstances of their work environment, who pays for their services. Galanter also focuses on what they are not doing (intentionally or otherwise), inquiring into the implications and consequences of their inaction. These inquiries extend from the official legal system to engage, encompass, and interact with Galanter\u27s second central focus: the social realm of intercourse and regulation. This social realm, in Galanter\u27s vision, is chock full of a plurality of interacting, overlapping, active regulatory systems of every kind-from religious systems, to corporations, to sports leagues, to the family

An Appreciation of Marc Galanter’s Scholarship

Lande highlights three of Marc Galanter\u27s works to illustrate qualities that seem especially worth emulating. He includes extended excerpts of his writing because his concepts and language are so evoctive that paraphrasing often does not do them justice. Galanter\u27s works that Lande focuses, include the classic articles, Why the Haves Come Out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal Change ; and Case Congregations and Their Careers . The professor\u27s recent book, Lowering the Bar: Lawyer Jokes and Legal Culture, is also featured. The book is the culmination of much of his work on American law

An Academic Visit to the Modern Law Firm: Considering A Theory of Promotion-Driven Growth

A Review of Tournament of Lawyers: The Transformation of the Big Law Firm by Marc Galanter and Thomas Pala

Worlds in a Small Room

In the lead article of this symposium, Marc Galanter points out that steeply declining trial rates hold true across a variety of trial genres, including state and federal courts, criminal and civil matters, and even federal administrative agencies\u27 own trial equivalents. This brief essay will explore a new setting in which to examine Galanter\u27s thesis

When Do Facts Persuade? Some Thoughts on the Market for “Empirical Legal Studies”

Chambliss talks about how Marc Galanter has devoted himself to combating the jaundiced view of the civil-justice system. Armed initially with great faith in the power of social science, Galanter and other socio-legal scholars of his generation, as well as many who have followed, have tried to combat misinformation in law and policy with the findings from systematic research--as if the facts would speak for themselves

The Study of Law and India’s Society: The Galanter Factor

Moog pursues three related themes or lines of inquiry that have marked her own research, the roots of which are to be found in Marc Galanter\u27s earlier works and the broader law-and-society movement. These include, the significance of lower courts, the role of the local bar, and the evolution of alternatives to formal court proceedings all represent essential areas for exploration in the attempt to understand the successes and failures of the Indian justice system

The Decline of Trials in a Legalizing Society

Outcomes determined by trials have been a steadily declining portion of case dispositions in American courts for more than half a century; and for the past quarter century, trials in those courts have been declining in absolute numbers. Although there are differences in detail, the trend line is clear—the trial is declining as the thing—indeed the central, defining, characteristic thing that our courts do. The departure of trials is mourned by some judges, practitioners, and academics but is celebrated by others. The rarity of trials remains hidden from many by their robust media presence. This Article juxtaposes the decline of trials to changes in the role and shape of law in American society and to the continuing increase of laws, regulations, lawyers, and litigation

Afterword

Galanter expresses his appreciation to the wide-ranging collection of articles that flatteringly claim to be inspired or influenced by his work. He determines that apart from a few side trips to the UK and to Israel, all of his works have been clustered in two regions widely separated in both space and culture: predominantly India at first, then predominantly the US, and a mix of both

Justice in Many Rooms Since Galanter: De-Romanticizing Legal Pluralism Through the Cultural Defense

Sharafi explores the emergence of legal pluralism during 1970s and 80s and discusses its relation in the cultural defense. Legal pluralism was more than a methodological stance intended to help lawyers and anthropologists talk to each other; it was an ideological commitment. In the 1980s, scholars like Marc Galanter and Sally Merry inaugurated the legal-pluralist sequel to the what-is-law debate between legal positivists and natural-law advocate. There are two major changes in the conception of legal pluralism brought about by the works of Galanter and his colleagues. The first was the shift from the understanding of legal pluralism as a plurality of norms administered by the state-the model embodied by Hooker\u27s classic study--to an understanding of a plurality existing beyond the state. The second was an attempt to get beyond Hooker in a geographical sense. Meanwhile, Sharafi asserts that work on the cultural defense has exposed binaries that complicate the earlier division between left-leaning pluralists and legal centralists, adding the feminist-versus-pluralist opposition into the mix