I am pleased to be part of this symposium to celebrate the life and work of Peter Bachrach. Although my focus is the relevance of Peter's ideas of power to law, I want to begin with some personal comments as well as raise some final thoughts, drawing on others' contributions. Like so many of Peter's other students, I adored him. Peter's joy in ideas, his passion for participatory democracy, his love of teaching, and his extraordinary capacity to listen to students were infectious. As others have said, he lit up every room that he was in. He inspired me to become a civil rights lawyer and law professor and to teach, write, and advocate about issues that he cared about.

Peter taught about social change, participatory democracy, community organizing, activism, and the importance of political involvement. And because I was at Bryn Mawr from 1964–68, Peter's concerns had enormous influence on me and so many others during these important times. I came to college interested in civil rights and majored in political science because of him. Peter's classes exposed me to law for the first time. His course American Constitutional Law introduced me to issues of law and politics, and excited me about the progressive possibilities of law. The questions of power and participation that he explored in political science he also brought to law.

He influenced many of us to think critically about law but also to think about becoming lawyers. Many classmates have told me that they would not have thought about becoming lawyers, a very big deal for women at that time, if it were not for Peter's encouragement. And Peter's work and teaching encouraged many of us who became lawyers to pursue women's rights, civil rights, poverty law, and international human rights, issues that Peter raised in his classes.

The work that I went to law school to do has carried on these themes of power, empowerment, and democratic participation. Much of my work as a civil rights lawyer involved representation of people who were seeking justice because they lacked power. My writing on the possibility of rights claims as a way of articulating claims of politics and making visible political issues of participation and empowerment flows from these concerns (Schneider Reference Schneider2000). The concept of a dialectical relationship between rights and politics, and analysis of this process in the women's movement, grew out of an emphasis on the importance of political participation and empowerment. Rights claims could be ways of asserting politics and vehicles to make visible political issues that we were articulating. Rights claims could be ways of seeking power.

But there are several other dimensions of law that Peter's work on power highlights. Two are raised by Judith Baer and Jane Mansbridge in the context of the women's movement. First, as Baer mentions, Peter's work on non-decisions raises the importance of looking at both presence and absence of power, of seeing where the law is present and where it is silent, and understanding that silence reflects power as well. Looking at silences, listening for what is not said, has been an important facet of feminist legal theoretical work. Second, Mansbridge observes the importance of Peter's work in revealing the ways in which participation in a political struggle could “strip away commitments to a false common good” and emphasizes her own experience of that in the women's movement. One of my arguments about the dialectic of rights is that these tensions and conflicts can emerge more fully in the assertion of rights claims in law and that it is important for them to do so. Peter's emphasis on participation, not outcomes, also relates to issues of process in the law, and the importance of looking past what might appear to be formal aspects of legal representation, like referenda. As a teacher and scholar of civil procedure, I see many connections in critical theory on process and process values. His deep analysis of the nuances of power has much resonance with the work of poverty lawyers and the study of social movements and law as well as with those who study and seek to reform the lawyer-client relationship so as to make clients more active decision makers in the legal process.

As I read Mansbridge's description of Peter's testimony in Congress, and his emphasis on the need for alternative and more authentic vehicles of political participation, I could not help think of the 2008 election and how I wished Peter had lived to see the energy around the election and to see Barack Obama elected. To my mind, there was more participation and more enthusiastic involvement in this election, facilitated by the power of the Internet, than in any other that I have experienced. People lined up at 5 a.m. at my polling place and so many others around the country to make sure that they could vote because they wanted to cast their ballots. They were moved when they saw so many others excited to vote. I thought Peter would have been so interested in the new and creative ways of communicating and spurring political activism that we saw during the election. I think he would also find the effort to keep citizens active and in touch with the new administration a fascinating development.

Finally, I want to echo Margaret Levi's plea to keep Peter's legacy alive through our research, teaching, and activism, both in political science and law. Thinking about Peter for our APSA panel, and again for this symposium, underscores the important role of activist-academics, as well as the price that is often paid for that activism. But it also highlights Baer's point about teachers and change, how one person can generate so much change for so many. I am deeply grateful to Peter for his ideas, his inspiration, and his love of teaching and to all of the other contributors to this symposium, for the insight and affection that we have shared for this very wonderful man.