This study offers suggestions regarding the reform of the American legal system. The author proposes a new interpretation of how law functions and evolves. He draws on historical and cross-cultural studies of legal systems, and argues that law is a fundamentally social as well as judicial process, and must be analyzed and practised as such. He uses many examples to show how the outcome of legal cases varies widely according to social characteristics of all the participants in a case. He argues that as long as the legal profession subscribes to a purely judicial model of law, it will be unable to address problems such as the pervasive discrimination inherent in the American legal system, the rising economic and social costs of litigation, and the inefficiency of law as a means of social regulation. The book also suggests ways in which the legal system might be rendered less discriminatory and costly.
