The Life of the Law The People and Cases that Have Shaped Our Society, from King Alfred to Rodney King

by Knight, Alfred H.

• ISBN13: 9780195122398
• ISBN10: 0195122399
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-07-02
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Law is intended to apply to common life and should be comprehensible to ordinary folk, but increasingly, it is not. The meaning of the law is becoming inaccessible, not only to the public but to the bar itself. In The Life of the Law , Alfred H. Knight outlines how some of the main contours of American law came to be as he recounts twenty-one stories beginning with Alfred the Great in the late ninth century and ending with the Rodney King trials in 1993. Knight gives us a veritable "biography" of our legal tradition by focusing on the key individuals, and the pivotal cases that have helped to mold the law as we know it today. The Life of the Law finds a riveting story behind each historic decision and recounts the tales with both narrative flair and ironic wit. The law is a living organism, constantly changing as new cases are decided, building on and modifying decisions that went before. Every case, no matter how lofty the principles involved, represents a human drama, a clash of competing desires. Alfred Knight's reflections on how twenty-one of these cases have left their mark on our society will inform and fascinate anyone interested in the law.

Author Biography

Alfred H. Knight is a trial lawyer specializing in media and first amendment law, and a former teaching fellow at Harvard Law School. He is currently a partner at Willis & Knight in Nashville, Tennessee.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION	1	(6)
1 NATIONALIZING ENGLISH JUSTICE (Late Ninth Century) The Seeds of England's criminal justice system are planted-inadvertently-when Alfred the Great enacts a law requiring citizens engaged in blood feuds to stop fighting for seven days and attempt to settle their differences.	7	(9)
2 THE RULE OF LAW (1215) Anglo-American law reaps magnificent and unexpected benefits when a stodgy medieval peace treaty between a king and his barons is made to operate under false pretenses, as a great charter of popular liberties.	16	(10)
3 THE BAR IS BORN (1291) That most necessary of evils and most evil of necessities, the professional lawyer, is brought into being by a busy monarch's on-the-run instruction to an underling.	26	(7)
4 BINDING PRECEDENT (1454) The English judicial system begins to "follow" its own prior decisions in deciding cases, thereby making a Faustian bargain with itself, which trades creativity and reasonableness for predictability and consistency.	33	(16)
5 MAN AGAINST THE STATE (1535) The bloody march toward legally protected individual liberties begins, with a most unlikely champion named Thomas More leading the parade.	49	(13)
6 THE RIGHT TO CONFRONT ACCUSERS (1603) The revolution that will lead to history's fairest criminal justice system is incited by the famously unfair criminal prosecution of Sir Walter Raleigh.	62	(9)
7 JUDICIAL REVIEW (1610) The most important doctrine of American constitutional law is invented by a sly English genius who receives no honor for it in the Old World and no lasting credit for it in the New.	71	(8)
8 THE DEATH OF A SCAPEGOAT (1641) A powerful anti-myth is born when England's most maligned court, the Star Chamber, is buried beneath a graveside avalanche of overwrought invective.	79	(10)
9 THE PRIVILEGE AGAINST SELF-INCRIMINATION (1649) That unique Anglo-American trial right-the privilege of a defendant not to testify-is created by a madman who habitually imagines rights that don't exist and lacks the sense to distinguish imagination from reality.	89	(11)
10 FREEDOM OF THE PRESS (1735) Freedom of the press achieves its first true legal victory at the hands of twelve ordinary citizens of the New York colony.	100	(15)
11 UNREASONABLE SEARCHES AND SEIZURES (1761-65) The fuse of the American Revolution is lit by a pair of eccentrics who are bold enough to challenge unreasonable searches by government and eloquent enough to make their challenges stick.	115	(11)
12 THE BILL OF RIGHTS (1791) The often-invoked "original intent" of the Bill of Rights is nowhere to be found in 1780s' Philadelphia, belonging, as it does, to other times and places.	126	(11)
13 CONSTRUCTIVE TREASON (1807) The American rebirth of England's most vicious criminal law doctrine is aborted by a courageous chief justice named John Marshall	137	(15)
14 EQUALITY AS LAW (1853) The American Revolution is finally completed, as the law begins to fulfill an unkept promise of equality.	152	(11)
15 UNREASONABLE SEARCHES AND SEIZURES, CONTINUED (1886) The first significant Bill of Rights decision by the Supreme Court is delivered by a fundamentalist believer in the ideals of the American Revolution, thereby setting off a philosophical explosion that still reverberates.	163	(13)
16 THE RIGHT OF PRIVACY (1890) A new method of decision-making is foreshadowed by the self-conscious creation of a legal right in a Harvard Law Review article.	176	(9)
17 NATIONALIZING AMERICAN JUSTICE (1913-23) A mechanism is put in place for establishing national standards of due process of law, in reaction to a judicially inspired tragedy.	185	(13)
18 THE RIGHT TO COUNSEL (1942) A successful New York lawyer renews an old American legal tradition by defending an accused traitor during time of war.	198	(18)
19 EQUALITY AS LAW, CONTINUED (1954) The most important court decision of the twentieth century is announced as U.S. Supreme Court justices assume the role of philosopher-kings.	216	(12)
20 FREEDOM OF THE PRESS, CONTINUED (1964) The U.S. Supreme Court rewrites eighteenth-century American history in a brilliant opinion that will fundamentally reshape twentieth-century American history-for better and for worse.	228	(15)
21 TRIAL BY JURY (1993) The sanctity of Anglo-American law's most ancient and successful institution is threatened by modern communications technology.	243	(16)
Epilogue	259	(8)
Notes	267	(8)
Index	275