Synopses & Reviews
This is the standard reader in American law and constitutional development. The selections demonstrate that the legal order, once defined by society, helps in molding the various forces of the social life of that society. The essays cover the entire period of the American experience, from the colonies to postindustrial society.
Additions to this enlarged edition include essays by Michael Parrish on the Depression and the New Deal; Abram Chayes on the role of the judge in public law litigation; David Vogel on social regulation; Harry N. Scheiber on doctrinal legacies and institutional innovations in the relation between law and the economy; and Lawrence M. Friedman on American legal history.
Review
The best of its kind available... This collection is highly recommended. Jonathan Lurie
Review
A highly useful study... Among those whose work is included are well-known, prominent specialists in the fields of history, law, and political science. American Journal of Legal History
Synopsis
This is the standard reader in American law and constitutional development. The selections demonstrate that the legal order, once defined by society, helps in molding the various forces of the social life of that society. The essays cover the entire period of the American experience, from the colonies to postindustrial society.
About the Author
Lawrence M. Friedman is Marion Rice Kirkwood Professor of Law at Stanford University and author of many books, including A History of American Law, Crime and Punishment in American History, and American Law in the Twentieth Century.Harry N. Scheiber is Professor of Law, University of California School of Law, Berkeley.
Stanford University
Table of Contents
Preface to the Enlarged Edition
Preface to the First Edition
Part One: American Legal Culture
1. The Law in United States History
Willard Hurst
2. Notes Toward a History of American Justice
Lawrence M. Friedman
Part Two: Studies in Colonial Law
3. King's Law and Local Custom in Seventeenth-Century New England
Julius Goebel, Jr.
4. The Legal Heritage of Plymouth Colony
George L. Haskins
5. The Politics of Law in Colonial America: Controversies Over Chancery Courts and Equity Law in the Eighteenth Century
Stanley N. Katz
6. Law and the Enforcement of Morals in Early America
David Flaherty
Part Three: The Revolution and the New Constitutional Order
7. Popular Uprisings and Civil Authority in Eighteenth-Century America
Pauline Maier
8. Federalism and the Constitution: The Original Understanding
Harry N. Scheiber
9. Liberty and the First Amendment: 1790-1800
Leonard W. Levy
Part Four: Law and the Economy in Ante-bellum America
10. The Release of Energy
Willard Hurst
11. An Overview of American Land Policy
Paul W. Gates
12. Property Law, Expropriation, and Resource Allocation by Government, 1789-1910
Harry N. Scheiber
13. The Transformation in the Conception of Property in American Law, 1780-1860
Morton J. Horwitz
14. The Law of the Commonwealth and Chief Justice Shaw
Leonard W. Levy
Part Five: Crime, Criminal Justice, and Violence
15. Emerging Notions of Modern Criminal Law in the Revolutionary Era: An Historical Perspective
William E. Nelson
16. Violence and Vigilantism in American History
Richard Maxwell Brown
17. Urbanization and Criminal Violence in the Nineteenth Century: Massachusetts as a Test Case
Roger Lane
Part Six: Slavery and the Civil War
18. Chattels Personal
Kenneth M. Stampp
19. The American Civil War as a Constitutional Crisis
Arthur Bestor
Part Seven: The New Legal Order: Reconstruction and the Gilded Age
20. The Reconstruction of Federal Judicial Power, 1863-1876
William M. Wiecek
21. Justice Field and the Jurisprudence of Government-Business Relations: Some Parameters of Laissez Faire Constitutionalism, 1863-1897
Charles W. McCurdy
Part Eight: Progressivism and the Law
22. Social Change and the Law of Industrial Accidents
Lawrence M. Friedman and Jack Ladinsky
23. Legal Progressivism, the Courts, and the Crisis of the 1890s
Arnold M. Paul
Part Nine: Crime and Social Control in the Twentieth Century
24. Behavior Modification in Total Institutions: An Historical Overview
David J. Rothman
25. Urban Crime and Criminal Justice: The Chicago Case
Mark H. Hailer
Part Ten: Race Relations and the Law
26. Negro Involuntary Servitude in the South, 1865-1940: A Preliminary Analysis
William Cohen
27. Moorfield Storey and the Struggle for Equality
William B. Hixson, Jr.
28. Earl Warren and the Brown Decision
S. Sidney Ulmer
Part Eleven: The Bar and the New jurisprudence
29: Lawyers and Clients in the Twentieth Century
Jerold S. Auerbach
30. American jurisprudence between the Wars: Legal Realism and the Crisis of Democratic Theory
Edward A. Purcell, Jr.
Part Twelve: Restructuring the Legal Order: The New Deal Era
31. The Great Depression, the New Deal, and the American Legal Order
Michael E. Parrish
Part Thirteen: The Modern Legal Order: Public Law, the New Property, and the Regulatory State
32. The New Property
Charles A. Reich
33. The Role of the Judge in Public Law Litigation
Abram Chayes
34. The "New" Social Regulation in Historical and Comparative Perspective
David Vogel
Part Fourteen: The Study of Constitutional and Legal History
35. Doctrinal Legacies and Institutional Innovations: Law and the Economy in American History
Harry N. Scheiber
36. American Legal History: Past and Present
Lawrence M. Friedman
Notes
Contributors