The Creation of American Common Law, 1850–1880: Technology, Politics, and the Construction of Citizenship

by Howard Schweber

• ISBN13: 9780521158183
• ISBN10: 0521158184
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-04-14
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This 2004 book is a comparative study of the American legal development in the mid-nineteenth century. Focusing on Illinois and Virginia, supported by observations from six additional states, the book traces the crucial formative moment in the development of an American system of common law in northern and southern courts. The process of legal development, and the form the basic analytical categories of American law came to have, are explained as the products of different responses to the challenge of new industrial technologies, particularly railroads. The nature of those responses was dictated by the ideologies that accompanied the social, political, and economic orders of the two regions. American common law, ultimately, is found to express an emerging model of citizenship, appropriate to modern conditions. As a result, the process of legal development provides an illuminating perspective on the character of American political thought in a formative period of the nation.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
North and South	p. 13
Illinois: ôWe Were Determined to Have a Rail-Roadö	p. 44
ôThe Memory of Man Runneth Not to the Contraryö: Cases Involving Damage to Property	p. 63
ôIntelligent Beingsö: Cases Involving Injuries to Persons	p. 90
The North: Ohio, Vermont, and New York	p. 118
Virginia through the 1850s: The Last Days of Planter Rule	p. 147
The Common Law of Antebellum Virginia: The Preservation of Status	p. 168
Virginia's Version of American Common Law: Old Wine in New Bottles	p. 194
The South: Georgia, North Carolina, and Kentucky	p. 226
Legal Change and Social Order	p. 259
Index of Cases	p. 273
Bibliography	p. 279
Index	p. 293
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