Legal History

• Author: Jeffrey Lehman, Shirelle Phelps

Page 238

The record of past events that deal with the law.

Legal history is a discipline that examines events of the past that pertain to all facets of the law. It includes analysis of particular laws, legal institutions, individuals who operate in the legal system, and the effect of law on society. U.S. legal history is a relatively new subtopic that began to grow dramatically in the 1960s.

Before the 1960s legal history was confined mostly to biographies of famous lawyers and judges and to technical analysis of particular areas of SUBSTANTIVE LAW. In general it was an afterthought. Political historians made reference to important U.S. Supreme Court cases, but there was little in-depth analysis of topics such as CRIMINAL LAW, the law of SLAVERY, or the development of the state and federal court systems.

The study of U.S. legal history began with the work of James Willard Hurst. In 1950 Hurst published The Growth of American Law: The Law Makers, which examined many types of historical sources in order to fashion a history of U.S. law. Hurst went beyond the work of judges and courts to find material about the law in constitutional conventions, legislatures, administrative...