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7 - The Travails of Total Justice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 October 2011

By
Marc Galanter
Edited by
Robert W. Gordon  and
Morton J. Horwitz
Marc Galanter
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison; London School of Economics and Political Science.
Robert W. Gordon
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
Morton J. Horwitz
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
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Summary

THE TOTAL JUSTICE EXPLOSION

Among his many gifts, Lawrence Friedman is blessed with a wonderful capacity to detect what he has occasionally called “master trends” in the workings of law and society, discerning the common direction and subterranean connection among diverse phenomena. His observations on “total justice” qualify as a prime example. In his much cited book of that name, published in 1985, he characterizes the advance of remedy and protection for many of life's injuries and troubles and the corresponding elevation of expectations as a master and unidirectional trend in American law and legal culture. The enlargement of justice that he describes includes two components: a general expectation of justice in the sense of fair treatment and recompense for injury and loss.

Total justice is a “super-principle” that has gathered momentum over the past century. Its arrival reflected a sea change in legal culture, that itself reflects profound changes in the organization of society. These changes in society derive from the burgeoning of science and technology that have “made the world over” and increased the social capacity for control and intervention. So this is an Enlightenment story – harsh legal rules give way to a more nurturant sort of law as legal culture changes to reflect humankind's increasing science-based mastery over the troubles and risks of everyday life.

Type
Chapter
Information
Law, Society, and History
Themes in the Legal Sociology and Legal History of Lawrence M. Friedman
 , pp. 103 - 117
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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