ENGLISH

Lowering the Bar: Lawyer Jokes and Legal Culture

By Marc Galanter

Book information

Publisher
University of Wisconsin Press
Year
2005
ISBN
0299213501, 9780299213503
Open Library ID
OL9644798M
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
5 MB (5286766 bytes)
Edition
1
Pages
449\449
Topic
Jurisprudence Law
Time added
2011-04-20 14:05:05

Description

What do you call 600 lawyers at the bottom of the sea? Marc Galanter calls it an opportunity to investigate the meanings of a rich and time-honored genre of American humor: lawyer jokes. Lowering the Bar analyzes hundreds of jokes from Mark Twain classics to contemporary anecdotes about Dan Quayle, Johnnie Cochran, and Kenneth Starr. Drawing on representations of law and lawyers in the mass media, political discourse, and public opinion surveys, Galanter finds that the increasing reliance on law has coexisted uneasily with anxiety about the “legalization” of society. Informative and always entertaining, his book explores the tensions between Americans’ deep-seated belief in the law and their ambivalence about lawyers.

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