The Growth of American Law: The Law Makers

2011. ISBN-13: 9781584771944; ISBN-10: 1584771941. Hurst, James Willard. The Growth of American Law: The Law Makers. Originally published: Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1950. xiii, 502 pp. Reprinted 2001, 2011 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN-13: 9781584771944; ISBN-10: 1584771941. Hardcover. New. $39.95 * The first contemporary history of the development of American law, this book revolutionized the field of American legal history. The first study published after World War II and a ground-breaking work that devoted attention to several issues neglected in earlier histories, it surveys the nature and success of American law and its law-making agencies and legislative bodies from roughly 1740-1940. Considered "...a pioneering attempt to evaluate in broad terms the contributions to the development of American law made by its five chief formative agencies, the legislatures, the courts, the constitution-making process, the bar and the executive." William F. Fracher, Mo. L. Rev. 15:332-333. By the major legal historian whose writings led "... scholars from other disciplines... to look at law with a fresh and sometimes illuminating eye." Friedman, A History of American Law 595. An important work that has been highly regarded for its social perspective, Henry Steele Commager called it "...a pioneer work in this badly neglected field ...combine(s) scholarship, insight, and narrative and analytical skill in a striking manner." James Willard Hurst [1910-1997] was an important and influential legal scholar, the father of American legal history. He developed a new approach to legal history in moving it beyond the subject of the common law of England and its influence on the American revolution or a history of the American court system. Instead Hurst created a type of American legal history that encompassed its social and economic implications and the role of individual law makers. Born in Rockford, Illinois, he attended Williams College and the Harvard Law School, graduating in 1935. He serves as a research assistant for his law professor, Felix Frankfurter, and later clerked for Justice Louis Brandeis on the Supreme Court of the United States. He taught law at the University of Wisconsin Law School, Madison (1937-80, emeritus 1981). His books on American legal history include Law and the Conditions of Freedom in the 19th Century United States (1.