Legal History category: 1513 books

Representing the Race tells the story of African American lawyers who, during the era of segregation, confronted a tension between their racial and professional identities. Their untold stories pose the unsettling question: What, ultimately, does it mean to “represent” a minority group in the give-and-take of American law and politics?

Il y a deux constitutionnalismes. La constitution naturelle, historique, traditionnelle est éparse, non codifiée: elle résulte de l’écoulement du temps et de la sédimentation au fil du temps; tandis que la constitution moderne, codifiée, volontariste est systématique, synthétique: elle est...

Despite the critical role played by the Supreme Court of India, the lives of the judges have never been studied before. This seminal book presents biographical essays for each of the first ninety-three judges who served on the Court from 1950 through mid-1989. The essays in the book are based on interviews...

This book shows the trends in jurisprudence which guided the United States in its first hundred years.

“Well-researched and beautifully written.… Collins knows how to build suspense.”—San Francisco Chronicle On November 23rd of 1849, in the heart of Boston, one of the city’s richest men simply vanished. Dr. George Parkman, a Brahmin who owned much of Boston’s West End, was last seen...

The power and influence of the federal judiciary has been widely discussed and understood. And while there have been a fair number of institutional studies-studies of individual district courts or courts of appeal--there have been very few studies of the judiciary that emphasize the judges themselves....

In the new afterword Ralph Rossum covers Antonin Scalia’s entire career and discusses the thirty-eight major opinions since the original 2006 publication, including District of Columbia v. Heller, his dissent in the Obamacare cases of NFIB v. Sebelius and King v. Burwell, his important recess appointments...

The closing arguments from ten noteworthy cases—“lawyers and nonlawyers will enjoy the passion and eloquence of these counselors; practitioners of law will find much to learn from them” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Until now, only the twelve jurors who sat in judgment were able to...

Caryl Chessman was a car thief in the 1940s. From St. Joseph's, Michigan, many of his father's ancestors settled in DuPage County, Illinois. Chessman's father, Serl was born in Itasca. Caryl Chessman was convicted of two kidnapping charges under California's "Little Lindbergh" Law. The California...

On the night of March 1, 1932, the infant son of famed aviator Charles A. Lindbergh and his wife Anne Morrow, the daughter of a diplomat, was kidnapped from the family's hilltop estate in Hopewell, NJ. The ensuing investigation involved not only crime fighters at the highest levels, but also members...

For over one hundred years, Thomas Jefferson and his Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom have stood at the center of our understanding of religious liberty and the First Amendment. Jefferson’s expansive vision—including his insistence that political freedom and free thought would be at...

The Idea of a Moral Economy is the first modern edition and English translation of three questions disputed at the University of Paris in 1330 by the theologian Gerard of Siena. The questions represent the most influential late medieval formulation of the natural law argument against usury and the...

Douglas Baird takes stock of the current state of contract doctrine and in the process reinvigorates the classic framework of Anglo-American contract law, showing that Oliver Wendell Holmes’s set of principles, properly understood, continue to provide the best guide to contracts for a new generation of students, practitioners, and judges.

First Amendment defenders greeted the Court's Citizens United ruling with enthusiasm, while electoral reformers recoiled in disbelief. Robert Post offers a constitutional theory that seeks to reconcile these sharply divided camps, and he explains how the case might have been decided in a way that would preserve free speech and electoral integrity.