Railroads and American Law

by Ely, James W.

• ISBN13: 9780700611447
• ISBN10: 0700611444
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-12-01
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Kansas

Summary

At its peak, the railroad was the Internet of its day in its transformative impact on American life and law. A harbinger and promoter of economic empire, it was also the icon of a technological revolution that accelerated national expansion and in the process transformed our legal system. James W. Ely Jr., in the first comprehensive legal history of the rail industry, shows that the two institutions -- the railroad and American law -- had a profound influence on each other.

Ely chronicles how "America's first big business" impelled the creation of a vast array of new laws in a country where long-distance internal transport had previously been limited to canals and turnpikes. Railroads, the first major industry to experience extensive regulation, brought about significant legal innovations governing interstate commerce, eminent domain, private property, labor relations, and much more. Much of this development was originally designed to serve the interests of the railroads themselves but gradually came to contest and control the industry's power and exploitativ

Author Biography

James W. Ely, Jr., is Milton R. Underwood Professor of Law and professor of history at Vanderbilt University.

Table of Contents

Prologue	vii
The Emergence of the Railroad	1	(42)
Civil War and Federal Land Grants	43	(28)
Regulatory Landscape of the Nineteenth Century	71	(34)
Arteries of Commerce	105	(12)
Law Governing Railroad Operations	117	(18)
Railroads and Social Conflict	135	(40)
Insolvency, Receiverships, and Commercial Practices	175	(14)
Property and Taxation	189	(22)
Liability for Personal Injury	211	(14)
Railroads in the Progressive Era	225	(16)
World War I and the Expansion of Federal Regulatory Authority	241	(10)
Tangled Labor Relations	251	(14)
Legal Problems of Railroad Decline	265	(16)
Epilogue	281	(6)
Notes	287	(46)
Bibliography	333	(18)
List of Cases Cited	351	(6)
Subject Index	357