Voluntarism Triumphant: Forbath on Law and Labor

Abstract

In a scant 173 pages of text, William Forbath sets for himself a formidable task: demonstrating empirically that is not merely reactive, reflecting the social, political, and economic forces and policies of its day, but that itself influences the social, political, and economic interests that, in turn, affect the law. Among historians and social and political scientists as with professors, scholarship about and society has emphasized the ways that the interests of social groups shape the law; has slighted the ways that shapes the very interests that play upon it (at x). In his vision of law-in-history, Forbath sides with the critics of traditional historical interpretation, challenging the idea that and legal doctrine can be explained simply as adaptive responses to social needs.' Forbath, however, does not limit himself to trying to demonstrate that has an independent historical effect. He also seeks to inquire how influences social actors. One possible explanation, he suggests, is associated with social choice theory. It posits that law, like other social, political, and economic forces, may operate to constrain the pragmatic and strategic choices made by historical actors (at xi). While that is surely part of the picture, Forbath adopts a more radical theory: that the ideological, discursive, and symbolic dimensions of the law may have an independent