A Companion to American Legal History

Notes on Contributors x
 
Introduction 1
Sally E. Hadden and Alfred L. Brophy
 
Part I Chronological Overviews 5
 
1 Reconsidering the Seventeenth Century: Legal History in the Americas 7
Elizabeth Dale
 
2 What's Done and Undone: Colonial American Legal History, 1700.1775 26
Sally E. Hadden
 
3 1775.1815 46
Ellen Holmes Pearson
 
4 The Antebellum Era Through Civil War 67
Alfred L. Brophy
 
5 Beyond Classical Legal Thought: Law and Governance in Postbellum America, 1865.1920 86
Roman J. Hoyos
 
6 American Legal History, 1920.1970 105
Christopher W. Schmidt
 
Part II Individuals and Groups 125
 
7 Native Americans 127
Christian McMillen
 
8 African Americans in Slavery 152
Thomas J. Davis
 
9 African Americans in Freedom 171
James Campbell
 
10 Women's Legal History 190
Felice Batlan
 
11 Families 209
David S. Tanenhaus
 
12 Who Belongs? Immigrants and the Law in American History 228
Allison Brownell Tirres
 
13 The Legal Profession 247
Mark E. Steiner
 
Part III Subject Areas 267
 
14 Law and the Economy of Early America: Markets, Institutions of Exchange, and Labor 269
Christine Desan
 
15 Law and the Economy in the United States, 1820.2000 289
Harwell Wells
 
16 Law and Labor in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 308
Deborah Dinner
 
17 Siting the Legal History of Poverty: Below, Above, and Amidst 329
Felicia Kornbluh and Karen Tani
 
18 Taxes 349
Robin L. Einhorn
 
19 Law and the Administrative State 367
Joanna L. Grisinger
 
20 Law and Religion 387
Steven K. Green
 
21 Legal History and the Military 406
Elizabeth L. Hillman
 
22 Criminal Law and Justice in America 422
Elizabeth Dale
 
23 Intellectual Property 441
Steven Wilf
 
Part IV Legal Thought 461
 
24 Law and Literature 463
Jeannine Marie DeLombard
 
25 Legal Thought from

Sally E. Hadden is Associate Professor of History at Western Michigan University, where she teaches legal history and the history of early America. She is the author of Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas (2001) and co-editor of Signposts: New Directions in Southern Legal History (with P. Minter, 2013).
 
Alfred L. Brophy is Judge John J. Parker Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he teaches property and trusts and estates. His books include Reparations: Pro and Con (2006), Integrating Spaces: Property Law and Race (with A. Lopez and K. Murray, 2011), and Transformations in American Legal History (with D. Hamilton, 2010).

"A Companion to American Legal History is an essential compendium of the state of the art, a reliable guide to a discipline that is daily crossing boundaries and probing more deeply into the role law has played in American life."
--David Konig, Washington University in St. Louis
 
"A remarkable collection of first-rate historians have contributed to this indispensable guide to the burgeoning field of American legal history. A must-read for students and scholars alike."
--Ariela Gross, University of Southern California
 
"When a field grows as explosively as American legal history has over the past generation, a volume like this becomes necessary and useful. These essays, collectively and individually, capture the scholarly moment with grace, good humor, and erudition."
--Hendrik Hartog, Princeton University