Law in America: A Short History (Modern Library Chronicles)

Product Description

Throughout America’s history, our laws have been a reflection of who we are, of what we value, of who has control. They embody our society’s genetic code. In the masterful hands of the subject’s greatest living historian, the story of the evolution of our laws serves to lay bare the deciding struggles over power and justice that have shaped this country from its birth pangs to the present.
Law in America is a supreme example of the historian’s art, its brevity a testament to the great elegance and wit of its composition.

Review

“
Law in America is a little gem. It is a peerless introduction to our legal history—concise, clear, tellingly told, and beautifully written. The greatest living historian of American law has done it again.”

—Stanley N. Katz,
former president of the American Society for Legal History and the Organization of American Historians

“All societies have laws, but neither all laws nor all legal systems are alike. No one has thought more deeply or written more clearly about the peculiar role of law in American life than Lawrence Friedman. In this trenchant, illuminating book, he distills a lifetime of scholarship and teaching into a concise and provocative explanation of the role that law has played in shaping the distinctive contours of American history and culture.”

—David M. Kennedy,
professor of history at Stanford University and author of
Freedom from Fear

From the Inside Flap

Throughout America’s history, our laws have been a reflection of who we are, of what we value, of who has control. They embody our society’s genetic code. In the masterful hands of the subject’s greatest living historian, the story of the evolution of our laws serves to lay bare the deciding struggles over power and justice that have shaped this country from its birth pangs to the present.
Law in America is a supreme example of the historian’s art, its brevity a testament to the great elegance and wit of its composition.
From the Hardcover edition.

From the Back Cover

Throughout America’s history, our laws have been a reflection of who we are, of what we value, of who has control. They embody our society’s genetic code. In the masterful hands of the subject’s greatest living historian, the story of the evolution of our laws serves to lay bare the deciding struggles over power and justice that have shaped this country from its birth pangs to the present. Law in America is a supreme example of the historian’s art, its brevity a testament to the great elegance and wit of its composition.
“From the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Lawrence M. Friedman is Marion Rice Kirkwood Professor of Law at Stanford University. He is the author of more than twenty-three books, including
American Law in the Twentieth Century, A History of American Law, and
Crime and Punishment in American History. Professor Friedman is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the recipient of numerous awards.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

One Introduction
At my university (Stanford) I teach a course to undergraduates called Introduction to American Law. On my way to class, on the first day—the class usually meets at nine o’clock, and it is a tough assignment to keep the students awake—I buy a copy of the Chronicle, the morning newspaper from San Francisco. When I begin the class, after the first few announcements and the like, I wave the paper in front of the class, and read some of the headlines. The point I want to get across to the students is that every domestic story in the front part of the newspaper, before you get to the recipes and the comics and the sports pages, has a legal angle—has some connection with the legal system. Of course, I have no control over the newspaper, but the trick never fails. Almost invariably, every story about public life in the United States, or private life interesting enough to get into the newspaper, will mention a law, a legal proposal, a b