Abortion and divorce in Western law /

Using comparative legal analysis, Glendon (Harvard Law School) investigates the ``puzzle'' of American abortion and divorce law. She rejects the positivist notion of law in favor of Clifford Geertz's approach in Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (CH, Dec '83), which states that law is an educational device that tells a ``story.'' When compared with other Western nations, this story reveals that the US is in the extreme position of offering the least protection to fetal life and to those facing the economic casualties of divorce. Yet the stories of other nations instruct us that there are alternatives. Glendon compellingly argues that the American legal response to abortion is unusual and, contrary to popular belief, that there is room for compromise. In the concluding section, she studies the origins of American law to explain why it is different. Here she struggles, as do all comparative analysts, to place the American system back into its social and political context. Well documented with appendixes and notes. Highly recommended for upper-division and graduate collections.-S. Behuniak-Long, Wilkes College