Kategoria BISAC: Law >> Legal History

The Hill and Wang Critical Issues Series: concise, affordable works on pivotal topics in American history, society, and politics.

The men who made up the Supreme Court when Earl Warren was Chief Justice (1953-69) changed America forever, and their decisions are still affecting constitutional law today. This overview of the Warren Court focuses on its landmark cases and enduring legacy.

This updated comprehensive history of the American Civil Liberties Union recounts the ACLU's stormy history since its founding in 1920 to fight for free speech and explores its involvement in some of the most famous causes in American history, including the Scopes -monkey trial, - the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the Cold War anti-Communist witch hunts, and the civil rights movement. The new introduction covers the history of the organization and developments in civil liberties in the 1990s, including the U.S. Supreme Court's declaration of the Communications...

"Fall River Outrage" recounts one of the most sensational and widely reported murder cases in early nineteenth-century America. When, in 1832, a pregnant mill worker was found hanged, the investigation implicated a prominent Methodist minister. Fearing adverse publicity, both the industrialists of Fall River and the New England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church engaged in energetic campaigns to obtain a favorable verdict. It was also one of the earliest attempts by American lawyers to prove their client innocent by assassinating the moral character of the female victim. "Fall...

Why is the law notoriously unclear, arcane, slow to change in the face of changing circumstances? In this sweeping comparative analysis of the lawmaking process from ancient Rome to the present day, Alan Watson argues that the answer has largely to do with the mixed ancestry of modern law, the confusion of sources--custom, legislation, scholarly writing, and judicial precedent--from which it derives.

What does it mean to talk about law as theater, to speak about the "performance" of transactions as mundane as the sale of a pig or as agonizing as receiving compensation for a dead kinsman? In Dark Speech, Robin Chapman Stacey explores such questions by examining the interaction between performance and law in Ireland between the seventh and ninth centuries.

Exposing the inner workings of the Irish legal system, Stacey examines the manner in which publicly enacted words and silences were used to construct legal and political relationships in a society where traditional...

What led to the Fourth Amendment s protection of the people against unreasonable searches and seizures, codified in written law for the first time in history, and are we in danger of losing that protection? Celebrated lawyer Samuel Dash, known for his role as Chief Counsel of the Watergate Committee, explores the struggle for privacy. He does so by telling the dramatic tales of the people who were involved in influential legal battles, including landmark Supreme Court cases.
Covering almost eight-hundred years of history, Dash begins with the time of King John of England and the Magna...

In Not in Front of the Children, Marjorie Heins explores the fascinating history of "indecency" laws and other restrictions aimed at protecting youth. From Plato's argument for rigid censorship, through...

Women were once excluded everywhere from the legal profession, but by the 1990s the Virginia Supreme Court had three women among its seven justices. This is just one example of how law in Virginia has been transformed over the past century, as it has across the South and throughout the nation.

In Blue Laws and Black Codes, Peter Wallenstein shows that laws were often changed not through legislative action or constitutional amendment but by citizens taking cases to state and federal courtrooms. Due largely to court rulings, for example, stores in Virginia are no longer...

In Law and Class in America, a group of leading legal scholars reflect on the state of the law from the end of the Cold War to the present, grappling with a central question posed to them by Paul D. Carrington and Trina Jones: have recent legal reforms exacerbated class differences in America? In a substantive introduction, Carrington and Jones assert that legal changes from the late-20th century onward have been increasingly elitist and unconcerned with the lives of poor people having little access to the legal system. Contributors use this position as a springboard to review...