Confronting Injustice

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 178.250.250.21 on Wed, 30 Dec 2015 18:52:44 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions BOOK REVIEWS CONFRONTING INJUSTICE. By Edmond N. Cahn.' Boston: Little, Brown & Co. I966. Pp. XXiV, 428. $8.95.Edmond Cahn was one of this country's most original legal thinkers. He authored three books, The Sense of Injustice, The Moral Decision, and The Predicament of Democratic Man, penetrating in their insights, challenging in their ideas, and matchless in their clarity and prose. All were widely acclaimed; the late Judge Jerome Frank characterized the first as "the most impelling discussion since Aristotle of the subject of justice," 2 and the second was hailed by Dr. Paul S. Douglass, a former President of American University, as deserving "a place on the shelf alongside Plato's Republic." 3 Prior to his death in I964 -at the age of 58 and at the height of his powers -Cahn was busy with yet another book, which he planned to call "The Meaning of Justice." But, even with that work unfinished, he had already given new accents and dimensions to the concept of "justice."In addition to his books, Professor Cahn left a legacy of numerous lectures, addresses and published articles which had appeared not only in legal periodicals but in such disparate publications as Harper's, Theology Today, the Nation, and the New York Times. The present volume, Confronting Injustice, is a collection of these writings, lovingly edited by his widow, Lenore Cahn, with an incisive introduction and helpful commentary by his close friend and colleague at New York University Law School, Professor Norman Redlich. Eloquent, perceptive, provocative, these papers truly reflect both the thinking and charm of the man whom Supreme Court Justice Black eulogizes in the Foreword as a "fascinating conversationalist" and a "great legal philosopher." Confronting Injustice has been divided, according to subject matter, into ten sections which cover an exceedingly wide variety of subjects, ranging from the Bill of Rights to the jurisprudence of "Fact-Skepticism." There is, however, a recurring theme reflecting the ideal which dominated Cahn's very being -his passion for justice. To him, justice was not a mere abstract concept but a vital force. "A concern with justice and compassion," he asserted, "is what converts mere legalism into living law" (p. 239).In his quest for justice, Cahn coined a distinctive terminology to picture the need for suitable accommodation in a representative democracy between the interests of the constituent citizen, on the one hand, and the competing interests of the general body politic, on the other. The individual was, in Cahn's view, "a consumer of the law" (p. 6), the...

Second‐order effects of CEO characteristics: How rivals' perceptions of CEOs as submissive and provocative precipitate competitive attacks

“…Regarding whether CEOs are aware of and act upon perceptions of their counterparts, practical evidence and theoretical logic lead us to expect that they do. Practically speaking, Fuld's () interviews asking executives if they gather information about rival executives and use the perceptions they form in developing strategies to engage those executives' firms suggests they do. Biographical accounts support Fuld's evidence as well (e.g., Ilian, ).…”

“…Further, we as scholars face consistent scrutiny for our inability to both integrate insights of practitioners into our theories and offer proscriptive advice for issues they face (e.g., Hambrick, ; Pfeffer, ; Tihanyi, Graffin, & George, ). This paper answers both calls: we incorporate insights of acting executives (Fuld, ; Ilian, ) into theoretical explanations, and as executives must consider whether and how rivals' competitive moves will be directed at their firms, offer a more complete explanation for a phenomenon of concern to practitioners as well.…”

“…Interviews and biographical accounts suggest modern business executives are applying the same principles as well. For example, Fuld () notes that when asking executives if they agreed with statements to the effect that “CEOs not only can, but should, be watching their counterparts closely, assessing their strengths, weaknesses and predilections, and developing counter‐measures accordingly,” findings indicate the claim “was not only true but almost an understatement.” Fuld's interviews, coupled with executive biographies (e.g., Ilian, ) suggest these decisionmakers actively gather information about their rivals' likely actions and responses and also, to very high degrees, base competitive maneuvers upon that information as well. Despite this practical reality, however, neither upper echelons theory (which articulates the role of executives in firm action; Hambrick & Mason, ) nor competitive dynamics research (which focuses on understanding firms' competitive actions vis‐à‐vis rivals; Ketchen, Snow, & Hoover, ; Smith, Ferrier, & Ndofor, ) advance theoretical explanations of how this phenomenon unfolds.…”

“…We adopt a similar stance, arguing both that current explanations of firm competitive actions are incomplete and that a more thorough understanding is possible by addressing how attackers' perceptions of a CEO affect attacks on the CEO's firm. As in the examples of Russian commanders and Muhammad Ali basing competitive actions upon perceptions of their opponents' hubris/aggressiveness as well as practitioner insights (Fuld, ; Ilian, ), we expect CEOs to base competitive actions toward other firms at least in part on their perceptions of rival CEOs. We propose that as the people ultimately responsible for making decisions on behalf of their firms, CEO characteristics may not only inform whether and how they will perpetuate an attack, as studies integrating upper echelons theory into competitive dynamics suggest (e.g., Miller, Kets de Vries, & Toulouse, ; Stephan, Murmann, Boeker, & Goodstein, ), but also precipitate these same executives being attacked, as theories of victimization suggest.…”

“…First, leveraging perceptions of rivals' traits when planning competitive actions is a long‐held practitioner notion—for example, Sun Tzu's Fifth Century BC text (Tzu, ) and Machiavelli's writings during the Renaissance (Machiavelli, ) both advocate weighing rival decisionmakers' likely moves in strategic decisions. Offering theoretical grounding and empirical evidence for long‐held insights both central to competitive dynamics (Gao et al, ) and relevant to practitioners (Fuld, ; Ilian, ) is an important step in a more socialized view of competitive attacks. The clearer picture of CEOs' roles in precipitating competitive actions offers a basis for research on attacks firms face and CEOs' roles therein, providing many avenues for future investigation.…”