Search results for ""author rennard strickland""

Richard M. Weaver believed that ""rhetoric at its truest seeks to perfect men by showing them better versions of themselves."" Language is Sermonic offers eight of Weaver's best essays on the nature of traditional rhetoric and its role in shaping society. Arguing throughout the book against society's reverence for relativism, and the consequential disregard for real values, this philosophical idealist uses his southern background and classical education as a backdrop for his scrutiny of our misuse of language.Weaver argues that rhetoric in its highest form involves making and persuasively presenting choice among goods. He condemns such supposedly value-free stances as cultural relativism, semantic positivism, scientism, and radical egalitarianism. Eschewing such peripheral aspect s of rhetoric as memorization and delivery, aspects too often now presented as the whole, Weaver deals instead with the substance of rhetoric. Ideas and the words used to express them, these are Weaver's subjects.Anyone concerned about language, its use and abuse in contemporary society, will find Language is Sermonic provocative and rewarding. The editors' critical interpretation of all of Weaver's writing, as well as Ralph Eubanks' brief appreciation of Weaver, make this a book no student of language and ideas should be without.Richard M. Weaver was one of the most stimulating and controversial rhetorical theorists of our time. He taught for many years at the University of Chicago and was the author of several books, including Visions of Order, Ideas Have Consequences, The Ethics of Rhetoric, and Life Without Prejudice and Other Essays.

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Lawyers and the legal profession have become scapegoats for many of the problems of our age. In The Lawyer Myth: A Defense of the American Legal Profession, Rennard Strickland and Frank T. Read look behind current antilawyer media images to explore the historical role of lawyers as a balancing force in times of social, economic, and political change. One source of this disjunction of perception and reality, they find, is that American society has lost touch with the need for the lawyer\u2019s skill and has come to blame unrelated social problems on the legal profession. This highly personal and impassioned book is their defense of lawyers and the rule of law in the United States. The Lawyer Myth confronts the hypocrisy of critics from both the right and the left who attempt to exploit popular misperceptions about lawyers and judges to further their own social and political agendas. By revealing the facts and reasoning behind the decisions in such cases as the infamous McDonald\u2019s coffee spill, the authors provide a clear explanation of the operation of the law while addressing misconceptions about the number of lawsuits, runaway jury verdicts, and legal \u201ctechnicalities\u201d that turn criminals out on the street. Acknowledging that no system is perfect, the authors propose a slate of reforms for the bar, the judiciary, and law schools that will enable today\u2019s lawyers—and tomorrow\u2019s—to live up to the noble potential of their profession. Whether one thinks of lawyers as keepers of the springs of democracy, foot soldiers of the Constitution, architects and carpenters of commerce, umpires and field levelers, healers of the body politic, or simply bridge builders, The Lawyer Myth reminds us that lawyers are essential to American democracy.

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