The Making of Toqueville's America: Law and Association in the Early United States (Book)
Title: The Making of Toqueville's America: Law and Association in the Early United States
Author: Kevin Butterfield
Abstract: Butterfield explains that the first generations of American citizens found in the concept of membership—in churches, fraternities, reform societies, labor unions, and private business corporations—a mechanism to balance the tension between collective action and personal autonomy, something they accomplished by emphasizing law and procedural fairness. As this post-Revolutionary procedural culture developed, so too did the legal substructure of American civil society. Tocqueville, then, was wrong to see associations as the training ground for democracy, where people learned to honor one another’s voices and perspectives. Rather, they were the training ground for something no less valuable to the success of the American democratic experiment: increasingly formal and legalistic relations among people. (provided by publisher)
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/making-of-tocquevilles-america-law-and-association-in-the-early-united-states/oclc/904413575&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780226297088
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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