Allen Steinberg brings to life the court-centered criminal justice system of nineteenth-century Philadelphia, chronicles its eclipse, and contrasts it to the system -- dominated by the police and public prosecutor -- that replaced it. He offers a major reinterpretation of criminal justice in nineteenth-century America by examining this transformation from private to state prosecution and analyzing the discontinuity between the two systems.

Steinberg first establishes why the courts were the sources of law enforcement, authority, and criminal justice before the advent of the police....

This book explores the treason trial of President Jefferson Davis, where the question of secession's constitutionality was debated.

Explains the origins of the Fourteenth Amendment's birthright citizenship provision, as a story of black Americans' pre-Civil War claims to belonging.

Fractional Freedoms examines paths to liberty forged in the slaveowning household, and legal claims brought by slaves in colonial Lima.