Volume 24, Number 6 · April 14, 1977
Get a Lawyer!
By Eric Foner
The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860
by Morton J. Horwitz
Harvard University Press, 356 pp., $16.50
Until recently, the history of American law has been centered in law schools and written by and for lawyers. Apart from an interest in constitutional cases, American historians have tended to avoid the field: their feelings of inadequacy in dealing with technical legal doctrine and procedure are surpassed only by their terror when confronted with statistics. Essentially a service for the legal profession, the history of law was mainly concerned with the origins and gradual development of a legal tradition independent of economic changes and political conflicts. The law was exalted as being above the realm of politics, and modifications of legal doctrines were more or less equated with scientific discoveries; their origins lay wholly within a self-contained and self-sufficient system of thought.
Review, 2349 words
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