Spreading America's Word: Stories of Its Lawyer-Missionaries.

• Author: Stephens, Anne
• Position: Book review

Spreading America's Word: Stories of its Lawyer-Missionaries. By Paul D. Carrington, New York, NY: Twelve Tables Press, 2005. Pp. xii, 392. $28.95 (paperback).

The desirability and feasibility of exporting democracy to other, non-democratic nations have been debated since the earliest days of the American republic. From the French Revolution forward, there have been proponents and detractors of the policy of fomenting democracy through force or other more subtle measures. Most recently, the justification for the invasion of Iraq and the broader vision of a transformational democratic process in the Middle East has put this practice center stage in the political debate. The lack of definitive success in Iraq and the arguable strengthening of autocratic regimes in the region, most notably Iran, have led to broad-based concern over the overall viability of exporting democracy. Although neo-conservatives have largely fallen from favor, the rhetoric of the transformative power of democracy persists from the Bush administration and the writings of other commentators such as Thomas Friedman. The roots of this debate, however, span the whole of American history, and the problems encountered in Iraq are far from unique. There are two constants across the historical scope: suspicions that efforts to export democracy are meant to serve American interests, and the general failure of these projects.

Paul D. Carrington, Professor of Law at Duke University, enters this debate with Spreading America's Word: Stories of its Lawyer-Missionaries, in which he chronicles the historical precedent for the practice of exporting American democracy from the colonial period forward. His work recounts the stories of the "lawyer-missionaries" who attempted to bring American-style democracy to Hawaii, Japan, and Mexico among other places. His ultimate conclusion is that these efforts roundly failed because "law reformers from the outside ... presented themselves as saviors come to bring a people or a nation to the eternal truths expressed in our Declaration of Independence" (p. 291), but the peoples targeted were not looking to be saved. Generally, these efforts did not result in democracy or any semblance of it; instead the efforts lead to resentment of outside influence and the ultimate abandonment of the project by the United States. Carrington proceeds by focusing on each region or nation that the United States targeted as a potential vessel for American democracy...