Law's Wars

Richard L. Abel is Connell Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the former President of the Law and Society Association, former Vice President of the International Sociological Association Research Committee on Sociology of Law, and a prize winner in both. He is the author of Speaking Respect, Respecting Speech (1998), Politics by Other Means: Law in the Struggle Against Apartheid, 1980-94 (1995), as well as numerous other books on lawyers and the legal profession.

• 1. Defending the rule of law; 2. Abu Ghraib; 3. Guantánamo Bay; 4. Interrogation; 5. Electronic surveillance; 6. Ius in Bello; 7. The resilience of the rule of law.

'Law's Wars offers an intensely detailed, richly sourced, immensely sobering account of five battles where the rule of law was at stake following 9/11. Abel's gripping legal and political narrative will stand as a monument of record to the failure of rule of law institutions, yet also to successful counter-attacks by branches of the state, civil society and market. The rule of law is not dead for Abel, nor for the US, however soiled its currency in the war on terror.' Terence Halliday, Co-Director, Center on Law and Globalization, American Bar Foundation