Reason in Law

Arguing that good legal reasoning remains the best device by which we can ensure that judicial impartiality, the rule of law, and social trust and peace are preserved, Thomas F. Burke and Lief H. Carter present an accessible and lively text that analyzes the politics of the judicial process. Looking at the larger social and institutional contexts that affect the rule of law – including religious beliefs and media coverage of the courts – Reason in Law uses cases ripped from the headlines to illustrate its theory in real-world practice.

Lief Carter grew up in the Seattle area in the age of “innocent” rock ’n roll (the 1950s). He earned his AB from Harvard College (1962) and his law degree from Harvard Law School (1965). The Vietnam War ended his career as a legal practitioner just as it started. He served in the Peace Corps (Bolivia) as an alternative form of service in 1966–1967 and then returned to graduate school at the University of California-Berkeley, where he earned his Ph.D. in political science (1972). His dissertation received the Corwin Award of the American Political Science Association. He taught at the University of Georgia from 1973 until 1995 and then served for a decade as the McHugh Family Distinguished Professor at The Colorado College. In addition to Reason in Law, he has published books on criminal prosecution, administrative law, and theories of constitutional interpretation. He comprehensively explores the similarities between the requirements of good competitive games—and particularly the requirement that the umpires and referees be impartial—and the requirements of good law doing in his latest publication, “Law and Politics a Play,” appearing in the Chicago-Kent Law Review, volume 3 (2008). Lief lives in Manitou Springs, Colorado.

Tom Burke is proud to have been born and raised in the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and to have received his undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota. Nonetheless, he is also glad to have left his native state for the warm California sun. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkeley in 1996. At Berkeley Tom studied with many of the professors who two decades earlier had taught Lief Carter, and, like Lief, he received the Corwin Award of the American Political Science Association for his dissertation. In 1996 he began teaching at Wellesley College, just outside of Boston, Massachusetts, where he is the Jane Bishop ’51 Associate Professor of Political Science. He has written articles on campaign finance, the European Union, the Americans with Disabilities Act, how organizations respond to legal mandates, empirical rights scholarship, the Bush Administration’s approach to legal politics, and the place of rights in American politics. His most recent article is ”Political Regimes and the Future of the First Amendment,”Studies in Law, Politics and Society 44 (2008), 107-139.