Michael E. Tigar (–1941)

"The law is a mask that the state puts on when it wants to commit some indecency on the oppressed." - Michael E. Tigar

If you're going to be a lawyer, be this guy. To me, legendary civil rights lawyer, Michael Tigar, bold, witty, introspective, and ethical, is a rock star. He freed thousands of Vietnam war resistors, represented the Black Panthers, the Chicago Eight, Angela Davis, and so many more.

I'm a fan of the old Dick Cavett shows. His shows exemplify to me days when people had something to say and were listened to by a likable, quirky, erudite midwesterner giving an audience eager to both learn and be entertained access to the greatest public personalities of the day.

It was on a Cavett show from 1970 that I saw Michael E. Tiger. He held me spellbound as he discussed the Seattle Seven and Rap Brown Law. I immediately bought his autobigraphy. It was a tough but rewarding read. I'd love to see this memoir be required reading. It's that good.

The case law in the book sometimes made my eyes cross a bit, but I pushed on because Tigar, a brilliant man and gifted writer, colorfully guides us through his personal, professional, and emotional life explaining with detailed clarity how he came to his decisions that led to his grand career in the heart of human rights from the 60s and on. Sensing Injustice..., a page turner, is a history lesson, a remarkable life story, examination of a person of conscience who was in the right places to use his legal expertise on unprecedented cases, and a walk through the dark and light of humanity.

Tigar drops infamous names like confetti, without any pretense, because this is his world and the professor gives us a front row seat to it all.

He confesses, "Looking back, there are some clients, causes, and actions that I took in the firm belief I was serving justice, and now I am not that sure," and "...all of us who have a sense of justice are likely to have doubts about the worth of our work." About Angela Davis he says, "When the state indicted Angela Davis, it was deploying the mythologies of Black/Woman/Communist/GunOwner as lenses of refraction through which to view her and her conduct. Angela, speaking for herself, and her lawyers busted the mythology."

Another quote I'd like to share from this book, (in which I high lit nearly half of), "Civil litigants have almost no constitutional entitlement to councel. Some of the lawyers appointed for the poor sleep through the trial and when awake do more harm than good.... Even qualified and motivated lawyers do not have equal resources." This is not news, but a strong statement coming from Tigar.

Any one of us would be lucky to have Tigar on our side when fighting injustice. If you want to dig in to a read of substance, I enthusiastically recommend this brilliant book.… (mer)

I bought this book by radical lawyer Michael Tigar, expecting it to be a typical critique of liberal interpretations of law in the past two centuries, of the kind so well summarized by Anatole France's famous statement that the majestic equality of the law forbids both the rich and the poor to sleep under bridges, beg, and steal bread. However, this turned out not to be the case. Instead, the book is an engrossing and fascinating look into the development of bourgeois law and legal ideology from the late feudal period (roughly 13th century) to the French Revolution. In this way, "Law and the Rise of Capitalism" is rather a chronological prequel to those many critiques.

Although hampered by the lack of footnotes, the historical overview, especially of the medieval period, is very thorough and well done. It is extremely informative and once again reaffirms the degree to which the popular view of the middle ages as a time of nothing but chaos and barbarism is incorrect. Heavily relying on medieval scholars of law like Beaumanoir, Michael Tigar shows how the development of merchant capital and the independence of the towns created the opportunity for law merchant to be created, which in turn could become the basis, combined with certain Roman law principles, for a modern legal system based on property and free contracts rather than custom and commons. For each period of time he demonstrates how this development continued and was framed in legal terms, at least as regards the societies of England and France (he barely mentions anything else, except Italian banking).

Tigar develops some well-argued theses on the transition from feudalism to capitalist society via merchant capital, and locates the start of this transition (initially with a false start crushed by recession and the Plague) much earlier than is usually done. He also refutes the popular idea of law after the French Revolution being utterly different from that before, instead emphasizing the way the French Revolution was the expression of a change long coming. Equally, he argues against the conception of English common law as a gradual building of the same basic pattern, showing instead how common law underwent changes towards a capitalist law system just as much as the more formal codes of France.

The concluding chapters give some leftist criticism of modern theories of law and restate Tigar's purpose in writing this book. Most of this is superficial and rather pointless. In fact, the book would probably have been stronger when formed as simply a book on the history of law, then with some radical contemporary critique tacked on. But nevertheless, this book is much worth reading.… (mer)