Book Reviews

• Still Unequal: The Shameful Truth About Women and Justice in America
• Advising Older Clients and Their Families, Vol. 1
• The International Dimensions of Internal Conflict
• Constitutional Politics in the States

Still Unequal: The Shameful Truth
About Women and Justice in America

By Lorraine Dusky (New York, NY: Crown Publishers Inc., 1996). 452 pgs. Hardcover. $27.50. To order, call (212) 572-2253.

Reviewed by Susan K. Taylor

If one can endure the author's bitter tone through the first 100 pages of this enlightening text, it actually becomes quite readable. Alternating between arguments detailing the historical injustices against women in all aspects of the law, and providing well-documented anecdotal examples of these injustices, Dusky covers the gamut.

The book thoroughly and at times repetitively discusses three major aspects of the law as it relates to women: legal education, women at the bar, and the law and the courts. The author has done her research and the discussion is heavily supported with endnotes reflecting the studies, interviews and statistics upon which she bases her discussion.

She proves women have justifiable complaints about much of legal education. For example, women are largely ignored in classrooms, sexually harassed by students and faculty, and endure sexist and outdated textbooks. However, some of her points are ludicrous. For example, she proposes that because women want to discuss how they feel about the laws and cases, classroom time should be used to discuss such feelings. This is unrealistic. The judge doesn't want to hear an attorney's feelings for the law or the case. The judge just wants to hear evidence and legal arguments.

Dusky provides painful detail, largely from interviews, of many women's struggles in the real world of law practice. Here is the well-known glass ceiling, the impenetrable "Good Old Boys" network, sexual harassment and the family-unfriendly grind of billable hours and rainmaking. The message is, if you want to practice successfully in a classic firm, get a mentor, look plain but sophisticated, have no family and try to "fit in." This is where most women, bright and successful in school, climb a different ladder because they choose to have a life outside the practice of law. Consequently, as corporate counsel, government attorneys and the like, women earn less than their male counterparts. Interestingly, the author cites several examples of the most successful and highest-earning women attorneys in law firms. These women are with firms predominantly comprised of women with devoted clients. They compete well with the male-dominated firms, and the attorneys have lives and high earnings.

The courts section covers a variety of topics for which Dusky details the misery of women's plight, including the treatment of women generally in the courtroom in family law matters, in domestic violence and as victims of sexual assault. The most poignant aspect is the continuing thread of sexual harassment and abuse. In law school, women suffer it from the instructors; in firms, they suffer it from the senior attorneys; and in court and judicial clerkships, they suffer it from the judges. In each instance, the penalty for complaining is loss to the woman's career: The harasser or abuser controls the woman's grades, her job and assignment of cases, or the outcome of a case in which she is counsel or litigant. In those instances where justice was dealt, the male offenders had earned much, enjoyed years of protection by their male peers and abused sometimes dozens of victims before the victims came forward. Often it took a lawsuit to have these abusers removed; and coming forward always resulted in loss of income and career for the female victims.

Still Unequal is a valuable resource for those working to update law texts, legal education, harassment procedures (especially those against professors, senior employees and judges), courtroom procedures, domestic and sexual assault law, hiring and promotions procedures in legal employment, and for legal ethics education.

Susan K. Taylor, Maryland 1980, has practiced legislative law in Maryland, and general practice in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. She currently is a freelance technical writer in southeast Wisconsin.

Advising Older Clients and Their Families, Vol. 1

Betsy Abramson, Richard H. Betz, Shirin H. Cabraal, Ralph M. Cagle, Matthew P. Dregne, Susan Ezalarab, C. Frederick Geilfuss II, Mitchell M. Hagopian, Rachelle R. Hart, Daniel P. Hayes, Margaret W. Hickey, Mary M. Hogue, Barbara S. Hughes, Michael R. Luttig, Donna McDowell, Harold A. Menendez, Jone Pedersen, Frederick Perillo, Carol Wessels Plaisted, Greg W. Renz, Jeffrey D. Spitzer-Resnick, Paul A. Sturgul, Bruce A. Tammi, Susan S. Ten Pas and Gretchen Viney. (Madison, WI: State Bar CLE Books and Elder Law Section, 1997.) 550 pgs. $125. To order, call (800) 362-8096.

Reviewed by Sara Buscher

Aging baby boomers and their parents are driving an ever-increasing demand for elder law services. The elder law attorney advocates for the independence, dignity and rights of older persons and helps solve their problems using a holistic, multi-disciplinary approach. Knowledge of trusts and estates, estate, gift and income tax law, probate, property and marital property law, family law, Medical Assistance and other public programs used by the middle class, Social Security, Medicare, pensions, IRAs, insurance regulations, security regulations, civil rights and elder abuse may be used in this practice.

The State Bar's CLE Books Division and Elder Law Section have copublished the first volume of a two-volume set, Advising Older Clients and Their Families, for Wisconsin practitioners. The authors and advisors, many of whom are among Wisconsin's foremost elder law attorneys, have astutely divided their coverage of this topic between volumes.

Lawyers thinking about practicing elder law and those whose existing practices are serving aging client bases will find this first volume has much to offer. The second volume will include topics more typically identified with elder law, such as guardianship and divestment.

The first of the book's three parts, entitled Elder Law Practice and Resources, will be extremely valuable to anyone thinking about devoting a law practice to older clients. This part discusses growing demand for services, practice building advice, management issues and ethical issues. Lists of professional organizations, a selected bibliography of the most authoritative resources, and a description of Wisconsin's Elder Support Network will save countless hours.

The book's second part, Employment, Housing and Family Law, covers topics that naturally extend existing practices into areas serving older clients, including age, disability and housing discrimination; hot issues like grandparents' visitation rights, guardianship of minors and juvenile court proceedings for custodial grandparents; and special financing programs aimed at elderly individuals such as property tax deferral, home improvement loans and reverse mortgages.

The third part, Retirement, Social Security and SSI, gives a good overview of pension plans and individual retirement accounts. The Social Security and SSI chapters cover benefit eligibility and applications. They extensively cover appeals, and administrative and judicial review procedures. This material lays the foundation for the second volume's topics because Wisconsin is an "SSI" state for Medical Assistance purposes.

Each topic has a well-written outline that is heavily footnoted to sources. Spotting issues and finding answers to questions in unfamiliar territory is easy. The book is well-indexed, and has a useful table of contents, helpful appendices, bibliographies and glossaries. It contains helpful tips from individual practitioners. The coverage is current, up-to-date and appropriate. It is an excellent addition to the law office library.

Sara Buscher, Marquette 1994, a Madison attorney and CPA, is a past member of the Wisconsin Elder Law Section's Board and a frequent contributor to its newsletter. Her practice emphasizes service to Alzheimer's families.

The International Dimensions of Internal Conflict

Edited by Michael E. Brown. (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996). 627 pgs. $25. To order, call (800) 356-0343.

Reviewed by Terry F. Peppard

The compleat lawyer needs a grasp of legal theory and processes, and of the complex human relationships that make lawyers useful, even necessary, in a world increasingly defined by conflicts great and small.

The International Dimensions of Internal Conflict explores - from the perspective of ethnic and political geography - preventing, managing and resolving an important class of large-scale human conflicts, which are those confined, at least at the outset, to a single state's borders. Call this the middle-macrocosmic view.

The book is as fresh as today's headlines. Part I is a stage-setting collection of separate essays on eight global hotspots, each by a recognized expert. It gets off to an explosive start in chapter one, "Fear and Loathing in the Former Yugoslavia," and never lets up. The essayists paint detailed portraits of their chosen regions, from East-central Europe through South Asia, the Middle East and Africa, to an account of "Peacemaking and Violence in Latin America." Some readers will find in Part I the book's most engaging material, and a sufficient reason to pick it up.

Part II is for the more committed reader. In eight chapters by a largely new panel of essayists, it examines issues raised by the treatments given to internal conflicts in Part I; questions such as the lessons of U.S. military interventions in Somalia and elsewhere, the enforceability of arms limitation initiatives, the efficacy of economic sanctions, the role of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) like the Red Cross, and more.

It's more technical than Part I, and a good bit drier, but Part II provides a necessary backdrop for the payoff that follows in Part III, in which editor Michael Brown offers an intricate critique of the themes exposed in the earlier segments. Brown dismisses as simplistic and "unsatisfying" the common contemporary explanation for the causes of internal conflicts; that is, that they stem merely from ancient ethnic or religious hatreds. In its place, he proposes a multi-factor framework for assessing the causes of the 25 or so such conflicts he counted as active when the book went to press.

Brown's conclusion: The predominant cause of serious internal conflicts in nations worldwide is the misbehavior of "domestic elites," usually but not always political leaders who, with disturbing regularity, create or promote conflicts in pursuit of their political or economic ends.

Brown's well-documented analysis makes for absorbing and disturbing reading. It's suitable for any compleat lawyer, whether the international trade specialist intent upon understanding the potential effects of internal conflicts on clients' foreign investments or the domestic practitioner who wants to appreciate the meaning of tomorrow's headlines. Better still, it's a welcome tool for any of us willing and able to extrapolate Brown and Co.'s insights to the microcosmic settings of America's courts and conference rooms.

Terry F. Peppard, U.W. 1973, practices in Madison. He is completing a graduate degree in international business and international law.

Constitutional Politics in the States:
Contemporary Controversies
and Historical Patterns

Edited by G. Alan Tarr (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996). 248 pgs. $59.95. To order, call (800) 225-5800.

Reviewed by James J. Casey Jr.

This book is a collection of articles examining state constitutional politics and how it is a central element in the broader context of state politics.

To advance understanding of state politics in its constitutional context, the articles provide analysis and research of different aspects of state constitutional politics and provide specific case studies. For example, one chapter is devoted to California's Proposition 8, a "Victim's Bill of Rights," which was passed on the referendum ballot in 1982. A second chapter is dedicated to a discussion of a counterrevolution of opinion in California in response to the California Supreme Court's expansion of criminal and other civil rights past the law laid down by the U.S. Supreme Court, which resulted in the removal of Chief Justice Rose Bird and two colleagues in 1986. Read together, these chapters illustrate that in rare instances the electorate will hold courts accountable for their rulings, and that certain segments of the electorate can be mobilized for political activity when the right combination of public sentiment and political resources are present.

Other chapters include a survey of the success and failure of constitutional amendments in New York, the constitutional right to privacy in Florida and the history of New Jersey litigation regarding financing of public education.

The most important and politically salient contributions are the chapters on the politics of term limits and the broader patterns of constitutional amendments among the states. States engage in the process of constitutional amendment far more often than at the federal level, a frequency that seems to be linked to state constitution lengths. The longer a constitution, the greater frequency of amendment. The federal constitution is altered rarely, and most alteration comes through judicial interpretation. State constitutions are freely amended in response to changes in the political climate, and where there is no lack of judicial interpretation. While the federal and state constitutions are considered "living" political and legal documents, in the latter situation steps are freely taken to amend. From a procedural standpoint state constitutions are easier to amend, but there is more to this tendency than procedural technicality.

In terms of legal and political saliency, term limits is perhaps the book's most issue-oriented contribution. The phenomena of term limits was first articulated at the local level. In most cases, only once the issue was placed upon the state ballot, were professional pollsters and political operatives used to make the final push for statewide passage. The success and failure of term limits referendums have advanced to the stage where political alliances and linkages have developed across state lines. What originally was a state-generated idea has developed into a national issue with national political organizations. The book provides an excellent outline of this phenomenon, and illustrates where legal efforts and political impacts intersect.

The book includes a bibliographic essay of primary and secondary sources to the issues it outlines, and also provides an excellent introduction to state constitutional politics. For the constitutional law attorney, the book's benefits are not so much the "black letter law" but rather the explanation that constitutional law has definite constitutional political impacts.

James J. Casey Jr., Dayton 1988, is a sponsored program officer at Northwestern University and an adjunct faculty member in public administration and law at Upper Iowa University. His research interests involve the legal and political contexts of public policy.