American Cultural Pluralism and Law

This new edition of Norgren and Nanda's classic updates their examination of the intersection of American cultural pluralism and law. They document and analyze legal challenges to the existing social order raised by many cultural groups, among them, Native Americans and Native Hawaiians, homeless persons, immigrants, disabled persons, and Rastafarians. In addition, they examine such current controversies as the culture wars in American schools and the impact of post-9/11 security measures on Arab and Muslim individuals and communities. The book also discusses more traditional challenges to the American legal system by women, homosexuals, African Americans, Latinos, Japanese Americans, and the Mormons and the Amish.

The new chapters and updated analyses in this Third Edition reflect recent, relevant court cases dealing with culture, race, gender, religion, and personal status. Drawing on court materials, state and federal legislation, and legal ethnographies, the text analyzes the ongoing tension between, on the one hand, the need of different groups for cultural autonomy and equal rights, and on the other, the necessity of national unity and security. The text integrates the authors' commentary with case descriptions set in historical, cultural, political, and economic context. While the authors' thesis is that law is an instrument of social policy that has generally furthered an assimilationist agenda in American society, they also point out how in different periods, under different circumstances, and with regard to different groups, law has also some opportunity for cultural autonomy.

JILL NORGREN is Professor Emeritus of Government at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center, the City University of New York. Her research has been supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, NEH, the ACLS, and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars. She has also published (with Petra T. Shattuck) Partial Justice: Federal Indian Law in a Liberal Constitutional System: The Cherokee Cases and a biography of pioneering American lawyer and presidential candidate Belva Lockwood. She is currently writing on the topics of Native American law and the legal treatment of women.

SERENA NANDA is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She is the author (with Rich Warms) o fCultural Anthropology, a widely used undergraduate text now in its 9th edition, Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India and Gender Diversity: Crosscultural Variations and Forty Perfect New York Days: Walks and Rambles in and around the City. Her current work is on the politics of cultural identity.