Law and Society 415 – Critical Book Review
Writing a Critical Book Review
A critical review is more than a simple summary or an
expression of preference (like/dislike). It is an analysis and evaluation of
the book using appropriate criteria. It comments on and evaluates the work in
light of the specific issues and concerns raised in a course.
Main paper idea/thesis:
Glenn Greenwald’s “No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden,
the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State” serves as a poignant exposé that
interrogates the health of liberal democracies in the face of expanding state
surveillance powers. Through Snowden’s revelations, Greenwald illuminates how
the unchecked proliferation of mass surveillance apparatuses undermines
foundational tenets of liberal democracy, such as individual privacy,
government transparency, and the rule of law. By critically examining the implications
of state surveillance on civil liberties and democratic norms, this review aims
to evaluate the robustness of liberal democracies in safeguarding fundamental
rights amidst growing national security imperatives, thus contributing to
broader discussions on the vitality and resilience of liberal democratic
principles in contemporary societies.
Book of choice:
PRIMARY SOURCE! ESSAY THESIS AND MAIN IDEAS MUST BE
DRAWN FROM THIS BOOK but all other sources can be used to support ideas.
No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S.
Surveillance State
by
Glenn Greenwald
IT IS AVAILABLE ON ANNAS ARCHIVE IF NEEDED but I did attach
a PDF copy of the book to the files.
other course sources that can be used to support:
Documentary:
Citizenfour
(linked in D2L also available on YouTube, Crave or HBO)
Interview:
Edward
Snowden on Joe Rogan Experience #1536
Available
on Spotify
Interview:
MSNBC
Interview with Edward Snowden (2019): https://youtu.be/e9yK1QndJSM?si=oftEU9j_3d2erQrB
Reading:
Case: United
States v. Moalin (2020) linked below with description of assigned
sections of the website and case to read.
Solove,
Daniel, J. (2011). “The War Powers Argument and the Rule of Law” (ch. 9)
in Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff Between Privacy and Security,
Yale University Press, pp. 81-91, Link: https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.lib.ucalgary.ca/lib/ucalgary-ebooks/reader.action?docID=3420710&ppg=92
Solove,
Daniel, J. (2011). “The Fourth Amendment and the Secrecy Program” (ch. 10)
in Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff Between Privacy and Security,
Yale University Press, pp. 93-101. Link: https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.lib.ucalgary.ca/lib/ucalgary-ebooks/reader.action?docID=3420710&ppg=104
Media
Commentary
Stoppard,
T. (Dec. 10, 2013). State Surveillance of personal data: what is the society we
wish to protect? The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/10/state-surveillance-data-tom-stoppard
Reitman,
J. (Dec. 4, 2013). Snowden and Greenwald: The men who leaked the secrets. Rolling
Stone.
Geist,
M. (2015). Citizen Four and the Canadian surveillance story. Michael
Geist. https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2015/02/citizen-four-canadian-surveillace-story/
Satter,
R. (Sept. 2, 2020) U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was
illegal https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nsa-spying-idUSKBN25T3CK
Risen,
J. (Dec. 23, 2020). “Snowden and Assange deserve pardons. So do the
whistleblowers Trump imprisoned.” The Intercept. https://theintercept.com/2020/12/23/assange-snowden-whistleblower-pardons-espionage/
Greenwald.
G. (Dec. 14, 2020) The case for a pardon of Edward Snowden by President
Trump. Substack. https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-case-for-a-pardon-of-edward-snowden
OTHER EXTERNAL SOURCES ALLOWED – MUST BE ACADEMIC PEER-REVIWED
Format
Your critical book review should be 2000 – 2,500 words (double-spaced,
12pt font, 2cm margins) using APA format for Citations.
DUE: March 29, 2024 via Dropbox in D2L @ 23:59 Late
assignments may be deducted by one letter grade (e.g. from A to A-) for every
24-hour period, or part thereof, that they are late.
Guidelines
Introduce your critical analysis that by setting out your
thesis. You should avoid presenting your
critical book review as a laundry list of points. Instead,
you should aim for a synthesized critique
of the book.
Begin your writing with a thesis based on your overall
evaluation. A strong thesis acknowledges
strengths and limitations of the book (if any). Critique is
not negative commentary.
Brief Summary
You must provide a very short summary of how the book is
structured and describe the evidence relied upon to advance the book’s overall
arguments. If your book is a first-hand account of an experience, you’ll want
to explain why this first-hand experience is important and where it fits in the
broader landscape on the topic. This is a very brief section of the critique.
Examples for brief summary:
–
Douglas Murray is a British journalist and
political commentator…”. [Pro-tip: use the book’s dust cover or jacket and do a
bit of research – avoid Wikipedia unless you fact check those claims].
–
“The purpose of Murray’s book it to lay out how
academics, media, and political elites have undermined Western enlightenment
values.”
–
Use quotations to illustrate: “The anti-Western
revisionists have been out in force in recent years,” he writes in the run-up
to a chapter on history.
–
“Among
the strongest chapters of the book are those detailing….”
–
“At times the writing is overly polemic,
glossing over important…”
Use your judgement. A paragraph should suffice for this
section to provide the reader with a
general sense of the book. Sometimes people start with this
as their first paragraph and then give their thesis as the second and third
paragraphs – it’s up to you. Ask me if you are unclear as to how to start. I’m
happy to help. If you introduce the author before your thesis and outline of
the essay it should be no more than a paragraph – ideally you integrate your
description of the author and their arguments into your thesis statement.
Thesis Statement & Roadmap
Aim to provide your reader with your conclusions about the
author’s main purpose in writing the book and their argument(s) followed by
your overall reaction to the book in your introduction. The aim is to contextualize
the book in a broader landscape. It’s weird, I know, to put your conclusion in
the introduction of your review, but this is how it is done when it is done
well. Another way to think about this is to say: A thesis is a conclusion, and
it must be presented in your introduction. Following the brief description of
your thesis you’ll then want a formal roadmap for your essay – introduce the
reader to the purpose of the writing and an outline of what will follow in the
essay. Note that there is no such thing as a 5-paragraph essay in university level
writing. In many ways your roadmap is the most important section of your essay
as it lays the groundwork for what follows in the writing. If you fail to
execute this well, the rest of your essay will suffer.
In addition to your writing skills and execution of a proper
referencing format, your work will be
evaluated on the strength of your critical analysis and how
well you integrate course themes and materials into your writing. Aim for 70%
of the writing to demonstrate critical analysis (critique is not negative
commentary, but an analysis of an argument in light of the evidence the author
uses to persuade their reader tested against the knowledge gained throughout
the course on the topic under analysis). Instead of simply summarizing the book
your aim will be to evaluate the book’s content, demonstrate critical thinking
by identifying strengths and weaknesses, and to foster a deeper understanding
of the complex topic in your reader. Your critique should contribute to the ongoing
conversation, offering valuable insights and thoughtful observations on the
topic using an existing body of knowledge on the topic. Provide your own
reactions and critical opinions regarding the work demonstrating knowledge
acquired from your course materials, lectures and independent learning on the
topic (see supplementary materials). In order to do this well, you must
demonstrate your knowledge of the overall issue to your reader through
references to the book’s content and broader writing on the topic.
Analysis
The main body of the writing should analyze the content of
the book in more depth. You must
choose which issues to focus on as you cannot possibly
evaluate every issue raised in any book.
Use purposeful categories to help structure this more
in-depth section of your book review. You
can think about the author’s methodology of investigating
the issue (first person reporting, third party interviews, documentary
evidence, comparative history, policy analysis, legal analysis and commentary
etc.), evidence (types of documents or statements from sources to support position),
logic (do the conclusions follow from the evidence provided? Is there something
missing that would refute those conclusions?), and finally the author’s overall
conclusion (Does the author suggest policy changes, legal remedies, cultural
remedies, less censorship/more censorship, greater security state interventions
or less?). More importantly, explain to your reader how the facts and arguments
presented in the book fit within the broader landscape of debate on the topic?
Does the book illustrate or support specific legal issues and problems? You can
decide which of the many issues raised in the book to focus on in your writing.
The aim will be to justify this focus as important for your reader to
understand. The choices you make about what to highlight as important for your
reader to know matter. Providing some depth of analysis allows you to focus on
certain key aspects of the work either by focusing on a few chapters that best
illustrate the arguments or choosing passages the best illustrate how the
argument develops throughout the book. You may also use quotations or
paraphrasing from the readings and tie these to any similar or divergent points
made by the author of the book. You may also choose passages that illustrate
some weaknesses in the author’s argument (and these should bolster your
conclusions). You are attempting to persuade your reader to interpret and
understand the book the way that you see it. At minimum you are asking your
reader to consider your analysis of the work in light of course themes and
readings.
Overall, your analysis should aim to inform the reader about
the issues at stake (as examples,
legal due process protections and/or justifications made
powerful political actors to thwart the
rule of law, role of free press in holding power to account,
role of whistleblowers to expose war
crimes). You should offer your own informed analysis of
these issues using course materials (or
other academic sources that you find relevant – but it is
not necessary to go beyond the course
readings. You are free to do so as long as your sources are
relevant to the topic under analysis).
You should aim to integrate your description and analysis of
the book drawing examples from
individual chapters to illustrate both the author’s views,
and your own critical analysis of these
views using references to course readings and other
materials. Use direct quotations or paraphrasing. The goal is to integrate
description and analysis cohesively in your writing. Critiques can sometimes be
difficult because they are much more than mere summaries of the book’s topic.
Good critique unfolds at two levels: 1) you give an accurate description and
analysis of the work; and 2) you give your own critical commentary on the book
drawing from your own considered knowledge of the issue. Most importantly,
you’ll draw upon course materials and discussions that unfold during the
lectures, the documentaries, and relevant media commentary, lectures or
interviews of the authors to provide an in-dept description and analysis of the
pertinent socio-legal issues the book raises.
Other sources
You can look at reviews of the book to get a sense of the
reaction(s) the book provoked and the
ways in which it was received by a wider audience (See
guidelines on the use of generative AI
below). Students fall down when they fail to cite these
reviews – remember other students also
rely upon these reviews and will cite the source. If you do
not cite the source of your ideas gained from other authors, you risk being
faulted for academic misconduct. In reading these reviews pay attention to the
publication and source (venue and author) and whether they are giving an accurate
representation of the book. This is especially true of generative AI since the
robots are scanning the interwebs and collating materials written by humans to
produce what seems like original ideas (they are not). Typically, these reviews
are not critical book reviews in the academic sense, but they can give you an
idea of the relevance of the work to wider audiences and some common criticisms
of the works. Make an effort to develop your own thinking and your own criticisms
– general reviewers are writing for a wider audience, rather than academic
audiences informed of the social, legal and political debates on state power
and law. If you are looking for better legal analyses of the issues look to
newsletters, blogs or magazines written by and for legal specialists in the
field.
Avoid Strawman Fallacy
Weak writing presents a strawman position on the author’s
thesis and then attempts to show
how the author’s position (as presented in the strawman
version) is flawed. The strawman
argument would fall into a broad class of ‘fallacies of
relevance,’ generically meaning ‘missing the point.’ See here and here for
information on the strawman fallacy and other logical fallacies. This type of
lazy writing fails to address the issue in question; merely taking the
opportunity to grind an axe. You can identify the strawman approach when
someone is refuting an argument not presented by their opponent. Good writing
takes a ‘steel- man/woman the argument’ approach by presenting the best version
of the author’s position and then engages with that position in good faith.
Strive to engage with the arguments in good faith, drawing out where you have points
of agreement and/or disagreement. Ignore book reviews or writing that engages
in strawman style argumentation or those that attack the character of the
author. Relying directly on someone else’s interpretation of the argument is
sometimes ill-advised since they may not be accurately representing the
author’s position (again, see strawman fallacy links above).
Evaluation
Your writing will be assessed on the quality of your writing
(including correct use of formatting)
and on your ability to inform the reader as to the nature of
the author’s argument as well as your ability to draw connections to course
themes/materials to provide context and analysis of the issues raised in the
book. Judicious use of quotations from the book will strengthen your critical analysis
(and help to avoid strawman-style argumentation described above). When you make
claims about a strength or a weakness of the book, you must give examples from
the book ideally using direct quotations (not ones that are cherry-picked or
taken out of context). Strong writing subjects
an author’s argument to critical analysis by linking it to broader societal and
legal issues using direct evidence throughout. A student who provides no
summary, no discernible thesis and no justification for the roadmap followed
cannot hope to achieve higher than a C grade on his or her writing. Similarly,
students who merely describe at length a range of facts or ideas found in the
book cannot hope to secure a grade above a C+. It makes no difference how well
the work is written and referenced, if you merely describe a range of facts
found in the book, you are not engaging in critical analysis and cannot secure
top marks.
I HAVE ALSO ATTACHED MORE IN-DEPTH INFORMATION ON THE ATTACHED DOCUMENT