For more than 200 years no institution has been more important to the development of the American democratic polity than the state legislature, yet no political institution has been so neglected by historians. Although more lawmaking takes place in the state capitals than in Washington D.C., scholars have lavished their attention on Congress, producing only a handful of histories of state legislatures. Most of those histories have focused on discrete legislative acts rather than on legislative process, and all have slighted key aspects of the legislative environment: the parliamentary rules...
For more than 200 years no institution has been more important to the development of the American democratic polity than the state legislature, yet no...
John Appleton was a prominent American lawyer who practiced in and around Bangor, Maine, beginning in the early 1820s and earned a national reputation as Chief Justice of Maine's supreme court. Through a study of Appleton's life and thought, Gold shows how the commitment to individual liberty and personal responsibility helped shape nineteenth-century American law. By tracing Appleton's life and law practice, the book addresses an aspect of early American culture that has received little attention--the nature of American individualism as embodied in the law. The book contributes to...
John Appleton was a prominent American lawyer who practiced in and around Bangor, Maine, beginning in the early 1820s and earned a national reputat...
Historians have paid surprisingly little attention to state-level political leaders and judges. Edward Kent (1802-77) was both. He served three terms as a state legislator, two as mayor of Bangor, two as governor, and two as a judge of the state supreme court. He represented Maine in the negotiations that resolved the long-running northeastern border dispute between the United States and Great Britain and served for four years as the American consul in Rio de Janeiro. The foremost Whig in Maine state politics and later a Republican judge, Kent articulated classic Whig political views and...
Historians have paid surprisingly little attention to state-level political leaders and judges. Edward Kent (1802-77) was both. He served three terms ...
Ohio s Rufus P. Ranney embodied many of the most intriguing social and political tensions of his time. He was an anticorporate campaigner who became John D. Rockefeller s favorite lawyer. A student and law partner of abolitionist Benjamin F. Wade, Ranney acquired an antislavery reputation and recruited troops for the Union army; but as a Democratic candidate for governor he denied the power of Congress to restrict slavery in the territories, and during the Civil War and Reconstruction he condemned Republican policies.
Ohio s Rufus P. Ranney embodied many of the most intriguing social and political tensions of his time. He was an anticorporate campaigner who becam...
