Book Reviews

Professor Shapiro starts his book by saying that it has two purposes and therefore ought to have two prefaces. By the same token it ought to have two reviews. One purpose of the book is to disprove certain commonly accepted propositions about courts and thus "to move toward a more general theory of the nature of judicial institutions."' The second purpose is to provide an introductory text in comparative law. Thus, the author seeks to enlist comparative law in support of legal theory and legal theory in support of comparative law. The propositions challenged by Shapiro are four in number. Together, they are said to constitute the "conventional prototype" of courts: first, that courts are independent; second, that they decide cases on the basis of preexisting rules; third, that they operate by an adversary procedure in which one party wins and the other loses; and fourth, that justice requires that the losing party be given the right to appeal. Indeed, Professor Shapiro argues that not only the fourth proposition, but the first three as well, are commonly presented as requirements for doing justice and hence as means of inducing two parties in conflict to submit to adjudication by a third. His own analysis, on the other hand, as the subtitle suggests, is a "political" one. He contends that courts, as instruments of government, are politically dependent on the sovereign, make law as well as apply it,