The Magic Mirror: Law in American History » (2nd Edition)

The late Kermit L Hall was President of SUNY Albany.

Peter Karsten is Professor of History and Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh.

Weaving together themes from the history of public, private, and constitutional law, The Magic Mirror: Law in American History, Second Edition, recounts the roles that law—in all its many shapes and forms—has played in American history, from the days of the earliest English settlements in North America to the year 2007. It also provides comprehensive treatment of twentieth-century developments and sets American law and legal institutions in the broad context of social, cultural, economic, and political events.

The Magic Mirror begins by discussing the ways that the settlers dealt with one another and with the indigenous populations; it examines municipal ordinances; colonial, state, and federal statutes; administrative agencies; and court decisions. It goes on to relate the ways that property, crime, sale and labor contracts, commercial transactions, accidents, domestic relations, wills, trusts, and corporations were handled by police, attorneys, legislatures, and jurists over the centuries. The text also pays close attention to the evolution of substantive law categories-including contracts, torts, negotiable instruments, real property, trusts and estates, and civil procedure-and addresses the intellectual evolution of American law, including sociological jurisprudence, legal realism, critical legal studies, Law & Society, Law & Anthropology, and Law & Economics schools of analysis and thought.

Featuring extensive updates by new author Peter Karsten, The Magic Mirror is ideal for courses in American Legal History.

1 Social and Institutional Foundations of Early American Law 7

2 Law, Society, and Economy in Colonial America 28

3 The Law in Revolution and Revolution in the Law 51

4 Law, Politics, and the Rise of the American Legal System 70

5 The Active State and the Mixed Economy: 1789-1861 92

6 Common Law, Jurists, and American Values: Continuity and Change, 1780-1880 113

7 Race and the Nineteenth-Century Law of Personal Status 142

8 The Nineteenth-Century Law of Domestic Relations 168

9 The Dangerous Classes and the Nineteenth-Century Criminal Justice System 187

10 Law, Industrialization, and the Beginnings of the Regulatory State: 1860-1920 208

11 The Professionalization of the Legal Culture: Bench and Bar, 1860-1920 231

12 The Judicial Response to Industrialization: 1860-1920 247

13 Cultural Pluralism, Total War, and the Formation of Modern Legal Culture: 1917-1945 268

14 The Great Depression and the Emergence of Liberal Legal Culture 290

15 Law and Society in the Cold War Years, 1946-1990 310

16 The Imperial Judiciary and Contemporary Social and Cultural Change 341

Epilogue: More Like a River than a Rock 379

Notes 384

Glossary 415

Bibliographical Essay 419

Table of Cases 437

Index 445