Stuart Scheingold is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Washington, USA. He edited a previous Ashgate volume: Politics, Crime Control and Culture (1997) and has most recently published books and articles on the politics of rights, on cause lawyers, and on the politics of crime and punishment. He is currently at work on a book about 20th century political novels.

'Scheingold's choice of articles to include in this volume, his imaginative interpretive essay, and the organization of the works included in the volume demonstrate how sociolegal empirical scholarship has and should address broad issues derived from political and legal theory.' -The Law an Politics Book Review, February 2007

• Contents: Series preface; Introduction. Rights, Legality and democracy: Rights: legal aspects, Michael McCann and Stuart Scheingold Classical Legality: Keeping Law Safe from Politics: Revisiting Fuller's critique of Hart-managerial control and the pathology of legal systems: the Hart-Weber nexus, James C. Ketchen; The forms and limits of adjudication, Lon L. Fuller; Sociology and natural law, Philip Selznick. Reconsidering the Classical Canon: Coping with Inequality: Why the 'haves' have come out ahead: speculations on the limits of legal change, Marc Galanter; Controlling official behavior in welfare administration, Joel Handler; The war on poverty: a civilian perspective, Edger S. Cahn and Jean C. Cahn; Public interest liberalism and the modern regulatory state, Michael W. McCann; Constitutional rights and social change: civil rights in perspective, Stuart A. Scheingold. The Case Against 'Adversarial Legalism': Reaffirming the Classical Canon: The passive virtues, Alexander M. Bickel; Decreeing organizational change; judicial supervision of public institutions, Donald L. Horowitz; Adversarial legalism and American government, Robert Kagan. In Defence of Politicization: 'Adversarial Legalism' Reconsidered: The passive-aggressive virtues: Cohens v. Virginia and the problematic establishment of judicial power, Mark Graber; The role of the judge in public law litigation, Abram Chayes; The prison conditions cases and the bureaucratization of American corrections: influences, impacts and implications, Malcolm M. Feeley and Van Swearingen; Legal mobilization and the politics of reform: lessons from school finance litigation in Kentucky, 1984-1995, Michael Paris; 25 years after Rodriguez: school finance litigation and the impact of the new judicial federalism, Douglas Reed. Legality, Equality and Democracy: Adversarial legalism: the American way of law, David Nelken; Index.