1. Investigating a Fateful Encounter
Utopian Ideals and Revolutionary Practice
Two Contested and Honorific Concepts - Revolution and Profession
Why do Professionals Behave the Way They Do?
What Have They Actually Done, or Tried To Do?
The Framework of the Investigation, the Evidence, and its Presentation
2. Ideal and Myth in the Lives of French Advocates
The Formation of a State and of a Profession
Reconsidering the 'Triumph of the Professionals'
...And the 'Demise' of Advocates Before the Revolution
The Original Revolutionary Design: Act I
Terror and Thermidor: Act II
Napoleon's Selections, Innovations, and Synthesis: Act III
Return of the Advocates and their Orders
Why Was the Profession Destroyed?
Cycles of Constitutionalism, Repression, and Revolution
Bourbon Beginnings 1815 - 1830
Orleanist Reprise 1830 - 1848
Napoleanic Coda 1848 - 1870
The Original Revolutionary Design Re-Enacted, Paris 1871
Marx's Nightmare and Tocqueville's Theatre
A Protracted and Reluctant Return to Normalcy
Schools, Stage, and Invisible Barriers
A Jurisdiction Defined by Incompatibilités and Plaidories
Three Threats to Absolute Independence
An Anachronistic Sense of Humour
Myth and Irony in the Career of a Super-Profession
3. Practitioners vs Legislators and Professors in the United States
A Journey from Utopia back to England - Lawyers in the Colonies
The Revolution Controlled, for the most part
The Massachusetts Electorate Interprets the Revolution
Other States, Other Interpretations
Removing Restrictions on Legal Practice
The Collapse of Bar Associations and the Philadelphia Exception
Elected Judges and Codes Complete Americanization
Was it Capitalism, the Frontier or the Revolution?
Three Stages of Reconstruction
What had Changed During the Interregnum?
Practitioners vs Professors and Legislators
Practitioners Search for an Effective Form of Government
An Undependable Ally: the Judiciary
ANother Undependable Ally: the Law Schools
Explaining Unethical and Innovative Behaviour
An Asymmetrical and Ever-Expanding Jurisdiction
How a 'Body' Became a Ladder
Failure or Success?
4. Learned Friends and Gentlemen in England - Beneficiaries of the Glorious Revolution
Confused Candidates in a Marketplace
Strange Bodies - the Inns Before the Revolution
The Trauma and the Tremor
Searching the Inns and the Courts
Explaining the Failure of the Revolutionary Moment
An Infrastructure of Absolutism is Created by Writs
...And Destroyed by 'the Greatest Thing Done by the English Nation'
The Medieval Corporation then Advances into the Modern World
Pupillages and Articles
Hedges, Honour, and Markets
Little Republics, Little Commonwealths
Spinning Webs of Mutual Restraint
Status Rivals and Allies
Industrialization, Democracy, and the Unwritten Constitution
Is Professional Power an Adequate Explanation?
Thatcher and a Turbulent Tercentenary
The Discrediting of Self-Governing Communities
5. Comparing Professions and Societies
The Kinship of Old Regime Lawyers
Facing Common Revolutionary Aspirations
Divergin Paths into the Modern World
An Unmistakeable and Inconvenient Conclusion
An Ancien Régime Guide to French Modernity
A Slice of the American Dream
M'Learned Friends Illustrate Englishness