The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860

The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860 PDF Author: Morton J. HORWITZ
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674038789
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
In a remarkable book based on prodigious research, Morton J. Horwitz offers a sweeping overview of the emergence of a national (and modern) legal system from English and colonial antecedents. He treats the evolution of the common law as intellectual history and also demonstrates how the shifting views of private law became a dynamic element in the economic growth of the United States. Horwitz's subtle and sophisticated explanation of societal change begins with the common law, which was intended to provide justice for all. The great breakpoint came after 1790 when the law was slowly transformed to favor economic growth and development. The courts spurred economic competition instead of circumscribing it. This new instrumental law flourished as the legal profession and the mercantile elite forged a mutually beneficial alliance to gain wealth and power. The evolving law of the early republic interacted with political philosophy, Horwitz shows. The doctrine of laissez-faire, long considered the cloak for competition, is here seen as a shield for the newly rich. By the 1840s the overarching reach of the doctrine prevented further distribution of wealth and protected entrenched classes by disallowing the courts very much power to intervene in economic life. This searching interpretation, which connects law and the courts to the real world, will engage historians in a new debate. For to view the law as an engine of vast economic transformation is to challenge in a stunning way previous interpretations of the eras of revolution and reform.

The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860

The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860 PDF Author: Morton J. HORWITZ
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674038789
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 378

Get Book

Book Description
In a remarkable book based on prodigious research, Morton J. Horwitz offers a sweeping overview of the emergence of a national (and modern) legal system from English and colonial antecedents. He treats the evolution of the common law as intellectual history and also demonstrates how the shifting views of private law became a dynamic element in the economic growth of the United States. Horwitz's subtle and sophisticated explanation of societal change begins with the common law, which was intended to provide justice for all. The great breakpoint came after 1790 when the law was slowly transformed to favor economic growth and development. The courts spurred economic competition instead of circumscribing it. This new instrumental law flourished as the legal profession and the mercantile elite forged a mutually beneficial alliance to gain wealth and power. The evolving law of the early republic interacted with political philosophy, Horwitz shows. The doctrine of laissez-faire, long considered the cloak for competition, is here seen as a shield for the newly rich. By the 1840s the overarching reach of the doctrine prevented further distribution of wealth and protected entrenched classes by disallowing the courts very much power to intervene in economic life. This searching interpretation, which connects law and the courts to the real world, will engage historians in a new debate. For to view the law as an engine of vast economic transformation is to challenge in a stunning way previous interpretations of the eras of revolution and reform.

The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860

The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860 PDF Author: Morton J. Horwitz
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674903715
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
In a remarkable book based on prodigious research, Morton J. Horwitz offers a sweeping overview of the emergence of a national (and modern) legal system from English and colonial antecedents. He treats the evolution of the common law as intellectual history and also demonstrates how the shifting views of private law became a dynamic element in the economic growth of the United States. Horwitz's subtle and sophisticated explanation of societal change begins with the common law, which was intended to provide justice for all. The great breakpoint came after 1790 when the law was slowly transformed to favor economic growth and development. The courts spurred economic competition instead of circumscribing it. This new instrumental law flourished as the legal profession and the mercantile elite forged a mutually beneficial alliance to gain wealth and power. The evolving law of the early republic interacted with political philosophy, Horwitz shows. The doctrine of laissez-faire, long considered the cloak for competition, is here seen as a shield for the newly rich. By the 1840s the overarching reach of the doctrine prevented further distribution of wealth and protected entrenched classes by disallowing the courts very much power to intervene in economic life. This searching interpretation, which connects law and the courts to the real world, will engage historians in a new debate. For to view the law as an engine of vast economic transformation is to challenge in a stunning way previous interpretations of the eras of revolution and reform.

Law and the Conditions of Freedom in the Nineteenth-century United States

Law and the Conditions of Freedom in the Nineteenth-century United States PDF Author: James Willard Hurst
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299013639
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
In these essays J. Willard Hurst shows the correlation between the conception of individual freedom and the application of law in the nineteenth-century United States--how individuals sought to use law to increase both their personal freedom and their opportunities for personal growth. These essays in jurisprudence and legal history are also a contribution to the study of social and intellectual history in the United States, to political science, and to economics as it concerns the role of public policy in our economy. The nonlawyer will find in them demonstration of how "technicalities" express deep issues of social values.

City of Courts

City of Courts PDF Author: Michael Willrich
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521794039
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
This 2003 book looks at contesting concepts of crime, and social justice in nineteenth-century industrial America.

Trials and Tribulations of International Prosecution

Trials and Tribulations of International Prosecution PDF Author: Henry F. Carey
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739169416
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
There have been many political dilemmas that impose structural constraints on the effort to legalize, judicialize, and criminalize normatively deviant behavior in international politics. The annual costs of these tribunals has peaked at approximately $400 million, of which $140 million is allocated to the ICC, the latter now having spent $1 billion in its first decade of existence. What has been the track record of these international criminal courts with jurisdiction to try heads of states and leading official and military officers? Has the domestic political will of states increased to prosecute their own leaders, following the ICC’s complimentary jurisdiction? How have powerful states supported these courts and how have they undermined them? In succeeding in punishing a number of high-profile cases, the tribunals arguably constitute what Habermas called communicative action that expresses the aspirations and nascent norms of international society. Beyond the confines of a specific of international cooperation, these courts are increasingly becoming norm entrepreneurs, defining the norms of coexistence among states, such that internal atrocities are seen not only as international crimes, but threats to the stability and order of international society. These courts are also redefining the attributes of what states must practice to preserve their reputations, a breach of which will prove increasingly costly. The tribunals are increasingly incentivizing and mobilizing informational networks from NGOs, IGOs, and states to document and publicize violations of international criminal law, thereby increasing exposure risks of perpetration. To be sure the patchwork of compliance and norm communication is fraught with double standards, hypocrisy, selective enforcement, and neoimperial delegitimation of the subaltern. Still, what has begun as institutions created in the absence of humanitarian action by the powerful may come to constitute normal state attributes similar to sovereignty, whose violation will be seen as not only illegitimate, but also meriting humanitarian action to correct and punish such behavior. The question remains whether ongoing impunity of both the powerful and the powerless will undermine or limit this potential.

The Transformation of American Law, 1870-1960

The Transformation of American Law, 1870-1960 PDF Author: Morton J. Horwitz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190282428
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
When the first volume of Morton Horwitz's monumental history of American law appeared in 1977, it was universally acclaimed as one of the most significant works ever published in American legal history. The New Republic called it an "extremely valuable book." Library Journal praised it as "brilliant" and "convincing." And Eric Foner, in The New York Review of Books, wrote that "the issues it raises are indispensable for understanding nineteenth-century America." It won the coveted Bancroft Prize in American History and has since become the standard source on American law for the period between 1780 and 1860. Now, Horwitz presents The Transformation of American Law, 1870 to 1960, the long-awaited sequel that brings his sweeping history to completion. In his pathbreaking first volume, Horwitz showed how economic conflicts helped transform law in antebellum America. Here, Horwitz picks up where he left off, tracing the struggle in American law between the entrenched legal orthodoxy and the Progressive movement, which arose in response to ever-increasing social and economic inequality. Horwitz introduces us to the people and events that fueled this contest between the Old Order and the New. We sit in on Lochner v. New York in 1905--where the new thinkers sought to undermine orthodox claims for the autonomy of law--and watch as Progressive thought first crystallized. We meet Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and recognize the influence of his incisive ideas on the transformation of law in America. We witness the culmination of the Progressive challenge to orthodoxy with the emergence of Legal Realism in the 1920s and '30s, a movement closely allied with other intellectual trends of the day. And as postwar events unfold--the rise of totalitarianism abroad, the McCarthyism rampant in our own country, the astonishingly hostile academic reaction to Brown v. Board of Education--we come to understand that, rather than self-destructing as some historians have asserted, the Progressive movement was alive and well and forming the roots of the legal debates that still confront us today. The Progressive legacy that this volume brings to life is an enduring one, one which continues to speak to us eloquently across nearly a century of American life. In telling its story, Horwitz strikes a balance between a traditional interpretation of history on the one hand, and an approach informed by the latest historical theory on the other. Indeed, Horwitz's rich view of American history--as seen from a variety of perspectives--is undertaken in the same spirit as the Progressive attacks on an orthodoxy that believed law an objective, neutral entity. The Transformation of American Law is a book certain to revise past thinking on the origins and evolution of law in our country. For anyone hoping to understand the structure of American law--or of America itself--this volume is indispensable.

The American Law of Slavery, 1810-1860

The American Law of Slavery, 1810-1860 PDF Author: Mark Tushnet
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691198152
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
In an examination of Southern slave law between 1810 and 1860, Mark Tushnet reveals a structured dichotomy between slave labor systems and bourgeois systems of production. Whereas the former rest on the total dominion of the master over the slave and necessitate a concern for the slave's humanity, the latter rest of the purchase by the capitalist of a worker's labor power only and are concerned primarily with economic interest. Focusing on a wide range of issues that include contract and accident law as well as criminal law and the law of manumission, he shows how Southern slave law had to respond to the competing pressures of humanity and interest. Beginning with a critical evaluation of slave law, the author develops the conceptual framework for his own perspective on the legal system, drawing on the works of Marx and Weber. He then examines four appellate court cases decided in three different states, from civil-law Louisiana to commonlaw North Carolina, at widely separated times, from 1818 to 1858. Professor Tushnet finds that the cases display a continuing but never wholly successful attempt at distinguish between law and sentiment as modes of regulating social interactions involving slaves. Also, the cases show that the primary method of accommodating law and sentiment was an attempt to use rigid categories to confine the law of slavery to what was thought its proper sphere. Mark Tushnet is Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin. Originally published in 1981. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Bone Game

Bone Game PDF Author: Louis Owens
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806128412
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Cole McCurtain, a professor of Indian Studies at Santa Cruz, investigates a series of murders with a connection to ecological diasaster

An Essay on Crimes and Punishments

An Essay on Crimes and Punishments PDF Author: Cesare marchese di Beccaria
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Capital punishment
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description


The Rise & Fall of Classical Legal Thought

The Rise & Fall of Classical Legal Thought PDF Author: Duncan Kennedy
Publisher: Beard Books
ISBN: 1587982781
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Legal historian G. Edward White recently described it as the "most widely circulated and cited unpublished manuscript in twentieth-century American legal scholarship since Hart & Sacks' Legal Process materials." It began the re-evaluation of law in the Gilded Age, and gave it its current name of Classical Legal Thought. It was also one of the first and most influential of the works that introduced European critical theory and structuralism into the study of American law. This reprint comes with a substantial new Introduction that puts the work in context and relates it to current scholarship in the field. It should interest historians generally as well as readers curious about how our legal system got its special modern character --