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Vol. 73, No. 7, July 2000 |
Book Reviews
This Month's Featured Selections
 Transforming
Practices: Finding Joy
and Satisfaction in the Legal Life
By Steven Keeva
(Chicago, IL: Contemporary Books, 1999).
226 pgs. $17.47.
Reviewed by Jason T. Studinski
This book is an epiphany. I recommend it without hesitation.
Transforming Practices offers a long overdue integrated
approach to the practice of law. As Keeva notes, "If the
goal of law school is to teach you to think like a lawyer, the
goal of this book is to enhance the experience of being a lawyer
by reminding you of how you can cultivate your innate ability
to think, feel, and be exactly what you are - a human being."
Keeva accomplishes this task by profiling individual lawyers
who demonstrate an aspect of his all-encompassing approach to
law practice. The reader delves into the lives of the featured
lawyers and watches them hone their skills and regularly summon
and apply them with razor-like precision. Along the way, these
lawyers search for meaning in what they do. Keeva expounds upon
the lessons they have learned and enunciates a practical and
unified approach to practicing law.
In each chapter, the author employs lively
prose and offers unique insights that deepen and enrich the practice
of law. For example, in "The Listening Practice," the
author exposes our common deficiencies in listening and recommends
exercises to improve our comprehension. As part of becoming a
better listener, Keeva helps us identify our prejudices and take
corrective action so that they do not interfere with understanding
what must be understood. Each chapter offers equally important
building blocks that complement one another.
The author forces readers to embark on a journey of self-discovery,
leading to greater awareness, and hopefully culminating in happiness.
Lawyers often are fixated on a particular goal, to the detriment
of achieving true satisfaction. The lesson of this book is to
leave behind such narrowmindedness to fully appreciate the wonder
that surrounds us every day.
Jason T. Studinski, U.W. 1998, is the
founding member of Studinski Legal Group LLC, Madison. He practices
plaintiff's employment, civil rights, and personal injury
law.
The Appearance of Equality
By Christopher M. Burke
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999).
224 pgs. $59.95. Order, (800) 225-5800.
Reviewed by Charles Crueger
The U.S. Supreme Court's redistricting cases dealing
with attempts to benefit a specific minority group through "racial
gerrymandering" under the Voting Rights Act are among the
most controversial on its docket today. One reason for the controversy
is that these cases are so theoretically complex - they
address issues of racial equality and what fair representation
means in a liberal democracy - that people are bound to
disagree no matter what the result. Another reason is that these
cases touch a raw nerve in our society because they reflect our
lingering racial divisions and tensions and remind us that only
recently the law denied some citizens the liberties enjoyed by
others on the basis of race.
The Appearance of Equality attempts to "describe
and undo" (the author's term) various theories about
fair representation justifying Supreme Court redistricting opinions.
On this, the author does a good job. First, Burke describes the
various liberal and communitarian conceptions of fair representation
(communitarian conceptions focus on the social nature of life
and emphasize the embodied status of the individual person in
society, while liberal conceptions focus on the abstract civil
and political rights of individuals). Burke then explains how
these conceptions need not be mutually exclusive or antagonistic,
and shows how the Justices rely on both conceptions to argue
their respective positions. In short, Burke lays out an interesting
analysis of the Court's redistricting opinions.
Yet for all this, Burke never steps beyond dissecting the
Court's opinions to develop a legal theory on fair representation
and equality. He never expresses a firm opinion on how the law,
and therefore the Court, ought to approach the redistricting
cases. Instead, he simply states at the outset that there is
no such thing as fair representation, and apparently, as the
title suggests, concludes that there is no "correct"
outcome in these cases. This is an untenable position, for legal
argument in all hard cases turns on contested conceptions of
abstract rights and principles; and it is the judge's duty
to discover what the rights of the parties are in our constitutional
scheme of government. But, by avoiding the issue of what conception
of fair representation is a more satisfactory elaboration of
the general idea of equality - the hard issue at the heart
of the redistricting cases - Burke does not challenge readers
to evaluate their own views about the issue, and thus the book
adds little to the fair representation debate.
This is a pity. Burke obviously has read widely and thought
deeply about the redistricting cases. One cannot help but conclude
that, if he so chose, Burke could have constructed a rigorous
theory of fair representation that would at least challenge readers
to think harder about their own conceptions on equality and racial
gerrymandering.
Charles Crueger, U.W. 1997, is a trial
attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.
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