The Class Politics of Law: Essays Inspired by Harry Glasbeek ed. by Eric Tucker and Judy Fudge (review)

Throughout his career, Harry Glasbeek has focused on issues of class and the law, from his early writings on the flaws of tort law and advocacy for no-fault liability insurance, to his recent publications, Capitalism: A Crime Story (2018) and Class Privilege: How the Law Shelters Shareholders and Coddles Capitalism (2017). These take a larger view of the flaws of capitalism as upheld by the law and are the inspiration for this collection of essays. Compiled by Judy Fudge and Eric Tucker, the eleven wide-ranging essays in The Class Politics of Law embody Glasbeek's broad interest in legal and legislative reform and fundamental questions of economic justice under capitalism. Glasbeek's interests and key passages from his writings are presented in the introduction by Tucker and Fudge, and further biographical detail is provided in the afterword by Ron McCallum. These bookends provide the structure that unites this collection and highlight key themes from Glasbeek's own work that run through many of the essays.

While the book is not divided into sections, the thought that has gone into placement allows certain themes to develop organically. Non-biographical chapters fall into two broad categories. First, the authors explore the use of law as a tool of reform to address specific problems in the style of Glasbeek's early writing. Second, more theoretical chapters use Glasbeek's class-based approach to the law as a way to envision its revolutionary potential and address corporate criminality.

Of the first group, Neil Brooks discusses potential reforms to the tax system to address the increasingly corrosive effects of income inequality. Keith Ewing's "The Changing Workplace Revisited" discusses problems with the Wagner Act and the bureaucratization of the union movement, and encourages trade unions to refashion themselves as a political force. Finally, in "Regulating to Prevent Workplace Violence," Katherine Lippel argues for a new frontier of workplace health and safety with the recognition of mental health and stress by employers as a legitimate field of government regulation. These chapters may seem less overtly radical than Glasbeek's current thinking; Brooks himself states early in his paper that Glasbeek would "undoubtedly urge something much more transformative." (45) Although perhaps erring on the side of reform rather than revolution, all three of these chapters are firmly in the tradition of Glasbeek's transformative thought. They present material solutions to the failings of the law, which has not kept pace with the changing political realities of neoliberalism. They also envision that redress happening within the realm of law and legislation, which is part of what made Glasbeek's approach so bold – the law contains the tools for its own reform. Fudge and Tucker wisely group these papers in succession (chapters three, four and five), which allows for a clear development of this theme.

If chapters three through five show specific uses for the law as a tool of class empowerment, then chapters six, seven and nine show us why that tool must be used for broader societal transformation. Tucker and Fudge show that Glasbeek recognizes assaults in the form of workplace accidents and deaths as "evidence of war" against workers. (7) Class conflict provides a way to understand Glasbeek's advocacy for the use of the law on a conceptual level as a tool of and for the working class. The second group of essays likewise contain this theoretical struggle for the law. In "Corporate Killing Personified," Steven Bittle, Steve Tombs, and David Whyte recognize that the laws enacted after disasters such as at the Westray mine have by and large left corporations unpunished for their lethal wrongdoings. Nonetheless, like Glasbeek, they refuse to cede the law to its most common use, as a tool of corporate interests and property. And although Bryan Palmer's article on the first Smith Act trial and the rule of law centres on a specific historical moment, focus is also given to...