Reading Assignments
REQUIRED READING:
Friedman, A History of
American Law (3d ed., 2005) (paperback), and
History of American Law Documents.
SUPPLEMENTARY READING:
I have placed a supplementary
text, Divine, Breen, Fredrickson, & Williams, America: Past and
Present (3d ed., 1991), on reserve in the Law Library. America:
Past and Present, is an excellent textbook written by
history-department historians who have no particular interest in law.
Although I try not to presuppose any knowledge on your part regarding
the history of the United States, you may desire more detail than the
readings and lectures provide. This book is a good place to find that
detail. Don't buy it; simply consult it in the library.
The required and supplementary
reading will be available on reserve in the Law Library. No
commercial outline, nutshell or hornbook exists that will be of any
utility whatsoever for this course.
TOPICS AND ASSIGNMENTS
We will take the following
assignments in order, each assignment will take about one class. My
tendency is to take too much time rather than too little, and for that
reason there are fewer assignments than scheduled class meetings.
Where no reading assignment is
indicated for a particular topic, this means that you'll be just fine if
you show up to class having read everything to that point in the class.
Use these days as opportunities to catch up with the reading.
INTRODUCTION
Friedman, History of
American Law, ix-xx.
LAW IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD
Friedman, History of
American Law, 3-61.
(Read this entire
assignment at some point early in the discussion of the colonial
period.)
1. "Remembered Folk
Law" (For the first class, read this assignment)
2. "Crime and
Punishment"
3. "17th-Century Courts and
Labor"
4. "Racism and Slavery in
17th-Century Virginia"
5. "18th-Century Colonial
History"
Jonathan Edwards, "Sinners
in the Hands of an Angry God."
George Whitfield, "The
Eternity
of Hell--Torments."
Revolution and Independence
6. "Revolution and
Independence"
7. "Excesses of
Democracy"
8. "Sources and Authority
of Law"
The Nineteenth Century
Friedman, History of
American Law, 105-249 (daily reading assignments indicated below
as Friedman, History, __.)
9. "The Legal
Profession"
10. "Public Lands"
11. "Native Peoples"
12. "Real Property
Law"
13. "The Corporate
Trajectory and Creative Destruction"
14. "Tort and Labor"
15. "Women, Marriage,
and Children"
Friedman, History,
149-154.
Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, Declarations of
Sentiments and Resolutions (Seneca Falls
Convention, 1848).
Maria Wightman versus
Joshua Coates , (MA, 1818).
Askew vs. Dupree,
(GA, 1860).
"An Act to provide for the
Adoption of Children," (MA, 1851).
Revised Statutes, Maine, 1847:
Chapter 89, Section 2.
Laws, Maine, 1849,
ch. 116, section 1.
16. "Property and
Marriage"
Laws
of New York, (NY, 1848).
White vs. White,
(NY, 1849).
Laws of New York,
(1849).
Blood vs. Humphrey
, (NY, 1854).
Laws of New York,
(1860).
Laws of New York,
(1860).
Buckley v. Wells,
(1865)
17. "Punishment and
Penitence"
Friedman, History,
207-222.
Gustave
de Beaumont & Alexis de Tocqueville, On
the Penitentiary System in the United States and Its Application in
France, (1833).
Charles Dickens, American
Notes For General Circulation
(London, 1850).
Penitentiary Law of 1829,
Statutes of Tennessee.
Thomas J. Dimsdale, The
vigilantes of Montana; or, Popular justice in the Rocky Mountains.
.
. (MT, 1866).
Optional: Friedman, Crime
and Punishment in American History (on reserve).
Links:
Eastern State
Penitentiary (text, photos, and a movie)
18. "Everyday Law of Slavery"
19. "Slavery as a
Constitutional System"
FROM THE CIVIL WAR TO THE NEW
DEAL
20. "Slavery, the Confederacy,
and the Civil War"
Dred Scott, Plaintiff in Error, v. John F. A. Sandford,
(USSC, 1857).
21. "A Ladder of Rights"
22. "Labor and Populism in
the late 20th Century."
Oliver
Wendell Holmes to Emily Hallowell, 16 November 1862, (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1946).
"THE REBELLION AT HOMESTEAD," Harper's Weekly (New York
City, July 16, 1892).
William Jennings Bryan, "Cross of
Gold," in William Jennings Bryan, Speeches of William
Jennings Bryan, (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1909).
Lochner v. New York (1905)
Video of this lecture:
Part1
Part 2
Part3 (total is about 60 minutes)
23. "Legal Education/The
Legal Profession"
Friedman, History,
279-308, 463-500
[Thomas
Shearman?], The Judiciary of New York, 105 North American
Review, July 1867, pp. 148-176.
David Dudley Field, "The Laws and
Lawyers of New York,"
"AN ACT relative to the law
school of Columbia College," Chap. 202, Laws N.Y. 1860
(Passed April 7, 1860).
Henry W. Taft, A Century and a Half at the
New York Bar (New York, 1938).
Robert Taylor Swaine, The Cravath Firm
and Its Predecessors (New York: Ad Press, 1946-48).
Christopher Columbus Langdell, SUMMARY of THE LAW OF CONTRACTS,
(1871).
24. "Progressive Era
Law in Action"
25. "Legal
Realism"
26. "The New Deal and
Conclusion"
Friedman, History,
501-584.
Louis
D. Brandeis, "THE OPPORTUNITY IN THE LAW," business--a
profession (1914).
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