High Priests of American Politics: The Role of Lawyers in American Political Institutions
Author: Mark C Miller
Using a multidisciplinary approach, Mark C. Miller draws in large part on interviews he conducted with members of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Ohio legislature, and the Massachusetts legislature. From this rich data, he shows how American lawyers are socialized into a common legal ideology, which in turn shapes the behavior of individual lawyer-politicians, legislative committees dominated by lawyers, and the entire legislative institutions of government. Miller goes on to explore the various roles lawyers play in the development of public policy. He identifies some intriguing differences in attitude between lawyer and nonlawyer legislators toward the courts and then establishes a typology of differences among lawyer-politicians themselves, showing how these different "types" affect the legislative process at both the committee and the macro-institutional levels. In the final chapter, he examines the ways in which the lawyerly approach to decision making influences the substantive policy choices of Congress and shapes its internal political culture. The ultimate effect of lawyer-dominated legislatures, Miller concludes, is a government that is preoccupied with incremental, rights-oriented procedural solutions - and not with sweeping changes in the substance of public policy.
Booknews
Documents how lawyers dominate state and national politics and policy, and explores the impact of that influence. Drawing on interviews with members of the US, Ohio, and Massachusetts legislatures, shows how lawyers are socialized into a common ideology, their effect legislation at both committee and whole- body levels, and differences between lawyer and non-lawyer legislators and among lawyers. Concludes that lawyers make the government more concerned with incremental than sweeping change. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Table of Contents:
| Acknowledgments | ||
| 1 | The Study of Politics and of Lawyers | 1 |
| 2 | Socialization into the Legal Profession | 17 |
| 3 | Lawyers, Lawyers Everywhere | 29 |
| 4 | The Prevalence of Lawyer-Legislators in the United States | 57 |
| 5 | Are Lawyers Really Different from Nonlawyers? | 76 |
| 6 | How Lawyer-Legislators and Nonlawyer-Legislators View the Courts | 95 |
| 7 | Are All Lawyer-Legislators the Same? A Typology | 122 |
| 8 | Lawyers on Congressional Committees | 139 |
| 9 | Lawyers' Views and Lawyers' Ways: The Institutional Effects of Lawyer-Politicians | 162 |
| Notes | 175 | |
| References | 185 | |
| Index | 223 |
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Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream
Author: Doris Kearns Goodwin
Doris Kearns Goodwin's classic life of Lyndon Johnson, who presided over the Great Society, the Vietnam War, and other defining moments the tumultuous 1960s, is a monument in political biography. From the moment the author, then a young woman from Harvard, first encountered President Johnson at a White House dance in the spring of 1967, she became fascinated by the man—his character, his enormous energy and drive, and his manner of wielding these gifts in an endless pursuit of power. As a member of his White House staff, she soon became his personal confidante, and in the years before his death he revealed himself to her as he did to no other.
Widely praised and enormously popular, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream is a work of biography like few others. With uncanny insight and a richly engrossing style, the author renders LBJ in all his vibrant, conflicted humanity.
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