Book Review

Making Time:
A Time For Every Purpose, Law And The Balance Of Life
by Todd D. Rakoff
(Harvard Univ. Press, 2002)

reviewed by Richard A. Forsten, Esquire

As lawyers, we deal with time on a daily basis. Billable hours. Statutes of limitations. Briefing schedules. Too much to do and too little time to do it. But for all our practical dealings with time, it seems as though we know little about the legal structures creating our sense of time.

In his book A Time For Every Purpose, Law And The Balance Of Life, Professor Todd Rakoff tells the legal history of time as he examines how our legal rules regulating time create our rhythm and sense of time. Time zones. Standard versus daylight savings time. The forty-hour work week (for non-lawyers, anyway). The 180-day school year. The five-day work week. These are just some of the topics that Rakoff discusses. As Rakoff demonstrates, our sense of time and our daily, weekly and yearly routines revolve around the legal rules that regulate time, and with changes to these rules, our routines could easily be affected in ways both good and bad.

Rakoff begins with the story of Wayne County, Kentucky, located along the border of the eastern and central time zones. In October, 2000, Wayne County officially “moved” from the central time zone to the eastern time zone. Clocks were set ahead one hour, and the daily rhythms in Wayne County were altered in numerous perceptible and imperceptible ways. Businesses were better able to coordinate with companies to the east. Television shows started an hour later (because all of the broadcast stations serving Wayne County were located in the eastern time zone before the change). There was more daylight after school for sports and other activities. Not everyone in Wayne County supported the change, but gradually people adjusted to it.

From this discussion Rakoff segues into a discussion of standard time, time zones, and perhaps the most basic question of all: what time is it? Initially, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, each locale had its own local time, based on solar mean time (noon was the time the sun reached its apex in the sky) for that locale. As a result, the “time” in Philadelphia was approximately 19 minutes ahead of the “time” in Pittsburgh. So long as travel times between locales was relatively lengthy, these variations in time mattered little; but as the travel times decreased, and need for coordination grew, problems began to arise.

As is so often the case in history, technological progress – in this case, railroads – led to a need for change. Railroads couldn’t keep track of all the various “local” times that their lines ran through, so they each typically standardized on the time of a particular city. The Pennsylvania Railroad, for example, ran on Philadelphia time. Clocks in railroad stations would have two clocks. One for the “local” time, and one for “railroad” time. If more than one railroad used a station, there might be three or more clocks. One for local time, and one for the time used by each railroad line.

In the latter part of the nineteenth century, various proposals were put forth to standardize time and create time zones; but, many local communities were still attached to their own local time, and efforts in Congress failed. The railroads, though, couldn’t afford to wait. In 1883, by voluntary agreement, the railroads agreed to a time zone map for the entire country, and the railroads all agreed to use the same standardized time.

Gradually, locales came to accept railroad time, or standard time, over their own local time. For a while, the two competing time regimes led to various lawsuits that seem almost quaint today. Did the insurance policy stating that the policy took effect at midnight mean local time or standard time, which could sometimes vary by 15 minutes or more? Depending on the answer, coverage may or may not have extended to a fire or other event (it seems an awful lot of fires started around midnight). Finally, in 1918, Congress passed the Standard Time Act establishing the four time zones (eastern, central, mountain and pacific) in the continental United States. Today, of course, we give little thought to standardized time, but what we take for granted was something that was not so easily achieved.

Standard time is just one of the legal constructs which affects our sense of time. The school year is another. One hundred and eighty days, with the summer months off, is now the national norm, but it was not always so. Initially, as compulsory public education came into being in the various states, the length of the school year varied widely. In rural areas, the school year tended to be shorter, with three months during the winter months and three months during the summer. In cities, by contrast, the school year was much longer – 49 weeks in the 1840s in New York City, 251 days in Philadelphia. Gradually, the school year was shortened in urban areas and lengthened in rural areas, until we came to the 180-day “standard” followed in most parts of the country. Contrary to popular myth, there is no clear explanation as to why a 180-day year became the norm. The belief that agricultural needs led to summers off for students (when they could help on farms) is not supported by the historical record. It might just as easily be the case that, in the absence of air conditioning, it was felt that schooling during the hot summer months simply wasn’t practical. Whatever the explanation, though, the current school calendar has a profound effect on the nation’s use of time. Families vacation during the summer (and hence there is more absenteeism from work). The return of students to school at the end of the summer also dries up the labor pool for some businesses (including, for example, businesses at the beach). Any debate about year-round schooling needs to consider not only the potential educational benefits, but also the changes such a plan would bring to our use of time (the summer months) for other purposes.

Time zones and school years are just a small part of the story. Forty-hour work weeks, Sunday blue laws, and numerous other laws and regulations affect our sense and use of time. Underlying all of Rakoff’s book is globalization, the internet, and the phrase “24/7” (24 hours a day, 7 days a week). Increasingly, events and activities which had once been compartmentalized and separate (work time, community events, family time, leisure time) have begun to blur together. Moreover, family members seem to have an increasingly difficult time in coordinating their activities. Some laws, such as mandatory Sunday closing laws (or blue laws), which once enforced a separateness and made coordination easier, have been eliminated. New laws, such as the Family Medical Leave Act, have been put in place to help with timing problems. Rakoff’s book closes with some thoughts about the way the law structures our use of time, and how, with various changes to the law, we could change our own use of time. Whether or not such changes can or should be made is something left for another day, but Rakoff does remind us that we don’t have to let time control our lives, and that we can use the law to control, at least to some degree, time itself.

Return to March 2003 Table of Contents.