Law has played a central role in American history. From colonial times
to the present, law has not just reflected the changing society in which
legal decisions have been made-it has played a powerful role in shaping
that society, though not always in positive ways.
Eminent legal scholar G. Edward White-author of the ongoing,
multi-volume Law in American History-offers a compact overview that
sheds light on the impact of law on a number of key social issues.
Rather than offer a straight chronological history, the book instead
traces important threads woven throughout our nation's past, looking at
how law shaped Native American affairs, slavery, business, and home
life, as well as how it has dealt with criminal and civil offenses.
White shows that law has not always been used to exemplary ends. For
instance, a series of decisions by the Marshall court essentially
marginalized Amerindians, indigenous people of the Americas, reducing
tribes to wards of the government. Likewise, law initially legitimated
slavery in the United States, and legal institutions, including the
Supreme Court, failed to resolve the tensions stirred up by the westward
expansion of slavery, eventually sparking the Civil War. White also
looks at the expansion of laws regarding
property rights, which were vitally important to the colonists, many of
whom left Europe hoping to become land owners; the evolution of criminal
punishment from a public display (the stocks, the gallows) to a private
prison system; the rise of tort law after the Civil War; and the
progress in legal education, moving from informal apprenticeships and
lax standards to modern law schools and rigorous bar exams.
In this illuminating look at the pivotal role of law in American life,
White offers us an excellent first step to a better appreciation of the
function of law in our society.
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