The primary founder and guiding spirit of the Harvard Law School and the most prolific publicist of the nineteenth century, Story served as a member of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1811 to 1845. His attitudes and goals as lawyer, politician, judge, and legal educator were founded on the republican values generated by the American Revolution. Story's greatest objective was to fashion a national jurisprudence that would carry the American people into the modern age without losing those values.

In preparing the long-awaited second edition of his well-liked text, Kent Newmyer consulted the best and most relevant of the recent scholarship on the antebellum Court, prompting him to revise important points in the story of the Court's evolution.

Nevertheless, the revised edition of the text retains the basic format and the conceptual premise of the original: the unique contributions of the Marshall and Taney courts taken together laid the foundation for the modern institution. Understanding the Supreme Court during its formative period provides useful insights into its continued...

Blackstone in America explores the creative process of transplantation the way in which American legislators and judges refashioned the English common law inheritance to fit the republican political culture of the new nation. With current scholarship returning to focus on the transformation of Anglo-American law to American law, Professor Kathryn Preyer s lifelong study of the constitutional and legal culture of the early American republic has acquired new relevance and a wider audience. The collection includes Professor Preyer s work on criminal law, the early national judiciary, and the...