The Law Is a White Dog: How Legal Rituals Make and Unmake Persons
"[T]his  work by Dayan is one of the most valuable contemporary books on law and  society to come out in quite some time. . . . The Law is a White Dog is  an innovative, highly intellectual book . . ."  --Choice"Dayan  succeeds mightily in her dismal project. The tale is told via death-row  chain gangs, cell-extraction with dogs, a rare first-hand report on the  horrors of supermax prisons…. The book is defined by three  extraordinary strengths. First, its moral force is as direct as that of  Charles Dickens, Émile Zola or Henry Mayhew. Second, I have never read a  better use made of case law: Dayan knows the importance of legal  decisions but is not bound by them, and is always aware that their  hinterland matters much more than their formal prose...Third and best,  the book takes the margins and makes them central...these features help  to make it a triumph of style as well as of substance."  --Conor Gearty,  Times Higher Education"  Written by an author well known for previous interdisciplinary work in  cultural studies and law, this book is a must-have for both general  academic libraries and academic law libraries…. Dayan's deconstruction  highlights the law as a key mechanism for social control, rather than a  narrow area of professional discourse or  procedural system that touches  only a small segment of society. The Law Is a White Dog will prove  valuable for anyone who seeks a comprehensive, critical understanding of  our society and the role played in it by the law."  --Law Library Journal"A  cumulative masterpiece of probing, relevant erudition. . . . More  concerned with conceptual structures than local specifics, Dayan breaks  rich new critical ground on the well-trodden path from plantation to  prison. [A] stunningly insightful yet painstaking inquiry into the very  real effects of the ongoing legal and cultural project of defining the  boundaries of personhood."  --American Literature