The Forum and the Tower: How Scholars and Politicians Have Imagined the World from Plato to Eleanor Roosevelt by Mary Ann Glendon (review)

477 BOOK REVIEWS The Forum and the Tower: How Scholars and Politicians Have Imagined the World from Plato to Eleanor Roosevelt. By MARY ANN GLENDON. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. 280. $18.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-19978245 -1. It is difficult to review a book that does just what it sets out to do and does it with clarity of expression and logic of presentation. Mary Ann Glendon has given us such a book with an unusual theme: the relation between political or legal theory and the practice of politics and the law. The book presents a series of portraits of people who are, at the same time, philosophers, political scientists, practicing lawyers, and political leaders, each one battling interiorly to find the equilibrium necessary to find his or her authentic calling among these vocations. Each “imagines the world” from the tower of legal theory and in the forum of political practice. The book examines figures from Plato, in the fifth century B.C., to Charles Malik in the middle of the twentieth century A.D. The sequence is temporal, not imposed by theory; yet the book’s genre is close to that of a history of ideas, particularly ideas that are meant to be realized in practice. It examines the relation between ideas and action in particular contexts that see similar notions return in different settings, like the themes of a fugue rather than the development of a symphony. The contexts are radically different, but the ideas return like ringing changes on a carillon. Political contexts are always less universalthan are philosophical theses, and persons theorizing in particular social contexts are yet more individual than either their ideas or their societies. Thematizing becomes complex. The theme of the book itself therefore challenges a review or a resume. Should one read for the well-researched biographical details rarely found in discussion about even well-known intellectuals, politicians and diplomats? Should one follow the lines of thought that reappear in different guise from time to time or concentrate on the historical settings that are presented just enough to illustrate the main theme? Any of these approaches would entail rewriting a book that is a tour de force. Each chapter concentrates on a different personage or on a few characters that are acting together in the same milieu. Each chapter stands on its own, but the chapters are interwoven by a common concern for the formula for good government and its expression in legal and political theory. The connecting BOOK REVIEWS 478 link lies in the question of how best to influence the social order. The pathos of many chapters is the discovery that many who started well as theorists ended as unsuccessful actors and vice versa. Few succeeded in both areas of endeavor. Two who combined both theory and practice to impressive degrees were Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.) and Edmund Burke (1729-97 A.D.). While centuries apart in time and half a continent separated in space, both Cicero and Burke illustrate how students of law can be political actors of great influence. Both also saw their most cherished goals and purposes stymied and, in part, defeated. Cicero lost his life defending the Roman republic as it was being transformed into an empire. Burke died believing he had lost his fight to defeat in court the worst abuses of the British Raj in India and had failed to advance significantly the cause of liberty in his native Ireland. Both were men of high principle, able in the midst of the shifting winds of politics to adjust their course of action without losing sight of their ultimate goals. Both felt isolated in their public activity and appreciated the anchor of private family life. Both are appreciated in history because their writings escaped the trap of their times, and their example shows how to withstand the abuse of governmental power in any age. Most of all, however, the integrity of their character preserves theirinfluence in the history of the relation between thought and action. They anchor and best illustrate the theme of Professor Glendon’s book. Finally, the book weaves into intellectual history the influence of legal codes...