The Stanford Law Chronicles: Doin' Time on the Farm

This is a decidedly personal account—sometimes irritatingly so—of Mirande's experiences as an established academic (professor of sociology at the University of California–Riverside) who started a second career by attending Stanford Law School. Throughout, Mirande sketches in scenes from his family's history as he examines the impulses that led him to law school and to react to it as he did. In nearly all respects, Mirande found studying law dehumanizing. He saw himself as a Chicano systematically marginalized, silenced and confronted by hierarchies into which he couldn't gain admittance. His complaints range from umbrage at a professor who didn't call on him in class, to resentments of fellow students who in turn resented him and a critique of the law itself as dominated by an elite white male culture. The author did find the practical side of law far more attractive. A course in lawyering and social change and a practicum in which Mirande successfully represented an applicant for political asylum appear to have made attending law school worthwhile. Readers will be alternately exasperated and intrigued by Mirande's well-written but self-absorbed account of his law school years. (Nov.)