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Google+One key reason to study history? To learn from the past: (1) take small steps, (2) favor reversibility, (3) plan on surprises, and (4) plan on human inventiveness.
history
Stephen Turner describes “The Social Study of Science before Kuhn”
Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions–in many ways established the modern field of science studies. Stephen Turner provides a brief, socioligist’s version of the lead-up to Kuhn’s seminal book.
Is everything old new again? Learning from the history of technology
Tim Wu argues that communications technologies follow “the Cycle,” beginning as open systems, only to be closed by corporate moguls – and then re-opening again as the Cycle starts anew after a new innovation emerges. Decherney, Ensmenger, and Yoo do not completely reject Wu’s thesis, but they do argue that Wu’s focus on individual actors neglects the complexities of other market players (advertisers, for example), government agencies, and other supply– and demand-side actors.
If the Fourteenth Amendment didn’t exist, could Obama still be President? (Yes)
Periodically various lay people attempt to interpret the law in ways that fit their version of (un)reality. While I appreciate the mainstream media simply ignoring these people (in general), it can occasionally be educational to refute its points as if they were logical and rational. A good example of this is the lawsuit Gordon Warren Epperly filed in Alaska challenging President Obama’s inclusion on the 2012 presidential ballot. It shows a fuzzy grasp of the law, legal terminology, logic, and history (a little reading of case law is a dangerous thing!), but pointing out some of its flaws can help illustrate these concepts.
Lecture on 19th-Century Legal History Before the Civil War
I gave a lecture the other day to an undergraduate history class on the topic of 19th-century legal history, mostly before the start of the Civil War (with hints to the future, of course). This is hardly comprehensive–I only had 50 minutes!–but I thought I’d share anyway.
Civil law’s influence on early United States law
It is a law-school maxim today that the United States is a common-law country, while most of Europe uses civil law: English-derived common law has as its most basic tenet the binding nature of judicial precedent, while Roman-derived civil law privileges statutes. But the more I investigate the history and details of each, the more clear it becomes to me that the United States, at least, owes (almost?) as much of its legal system to civil law as it does to “pure” common law.
Common law originalism: the common law was not so common
One reason to examine the reception of English common law in the American colonies is the reliance by modern originalists (like Antonin Scalia) on the generalized understandings of what the Constitution meant in light of its common-law context. But finding that stability may not be as easy as it might seem, at least in part because jurists of the time were, in many ways, as sophisticated as we are today in arguing with, against, and around precedent–which itself was hardly either stable or fixed.
Robert Horwitz on the deregulation of American telecommunications
Robert Horwitz’s The Irony of Regulatory Reform: The Deregulation of American Telecommunications, published in 1989, explores in depth the issue of telecommunications regulation at a time when telecommunications was once again in transition.
National identity through postal delivery of newspapers
In Spreading the News, Richard R. John writes about the development of the American postal system in the eighteenth century, and the police choices that leverages the system as a means of newspaper distribution.
Civil law’s influence on American common law: the appeal
In “Salamanders and Sons of God,” an article in The Many Legalities of Early America, Mary Sarah Bilder writes about the “Culture of Appeal in Early New England,” and situates the embrace of the right to appeal by New Englanders within the larger English and Roman legal tradition.
On the legal basis for English possession of North America
James Muldoon’s article in The Many Legalities of Early America, “Discovery, Grant, Charter, Conquest or Purchase,” discusses the surprising influence the Pope’s validation of Spanish and Portuguese possessions in the New World played in English justifications for their own American territory. But this justification was merged with an English focus on improvements to the land.
Colonial Law in Early America
In The Common Law in Colonial America: The Chesapeake and New England, 1607-1660, William Edward Nelson writes about three main colonial legal traditions: Virginia, New England, and Maryland. These three centers drew to various degrees from English common law, but deviated from it in a number of important respects and for reasons related to their establishments and purposes.
Early lawyering in colonial America
In the seventeenth century, according to Kermit Hall and Peter Karsten, “there were few lawyers and their status was problematic.”
Why do legal history? First remarks on Kermit Hall’s The Magic Mirror
In The Magic Mirror: Law in American History, Kermit Hall quotes former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. to explain why we should do legal history: “This abstraction called the Law is a magic mirror, [wherein] we see reflected, not only our own lives, but the lives of all men that have been!”
Was early Supreme Court Justice John Marshall an originalist?
The question of whether John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1803-1835, was an originalist is, of course, anachronistic, as the term had not yet been invented during his lifetime. Still, given the ongoing controversy regarding judicial interpretation today, it’s an interesting question to ask about one of the foundational justices in American jurisprudence.
First remarks on G. Edward White’s The American Judicial Tradition
I’m reading G. Edward White’s The American Judicial Tradition: Profiles of Leading American Judges as part of my general background reading on American legal history. Lawrence Friedman may argue that “[t]here really isn’t a canon for legal history,” but I think White’s book at least comes close.
