Taming the past : essays on law in history and history in law / Robert W. Gordon, Stanford University.
2017
KF352 .G67 2017 (Mapit)
Available at Stacks
Items
Details
Uniform Title
Works. Selections
Title
Taming the past : essays on law in history and history in law / Robert W. Gordon, Stanford University.
Imprint
Cambridge, United Kingdom : Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Copyright
©2017.
Description
xiii, 424 pages ; 24 cm.
Series
Studies in legal history.
Formatted Contents Note
Introduction
Part I. The Common Law Tradition in Legal Historiography. 1. The common law tradition in American legal historiography
2. Holmes's Common Law as legal and social science
Part II. Legal Historians. 3. Social-legal history's pioneer: the work of James Willard Hurst
4. Hurst recaptured
5. Morton Horwitz and his critics: a conflict of narratives
6. The elusive transformation
7. Method and politics: Morton Horwitz on lawyers' uses of history
8. E.P. Thompson's legacies
9. The constitution of liberal order at the troubled beginnings of the modern state
Part III. History and Historicism in Legal History and Argument. 10. Historicism in legal scholarship
11. Critical legal histories
12. The past as authority and as social critic: stabilizing and destabilizing functions of history in legal argument
13. Taming the past: histories of liberal society in American legal thought
14. Originalism and nostalgic traditionalism
15. Undoing historical injustice.
Part I. The Common Law Tradition in Legal Historiography. 1. The common law tradition in American legal historiography
2. Holmes's Common Law as legal and social science
Part II. Legal Historians. 3. Social-legal history's pioneer: the work of James Willard Hurst
4. Hurst recaptured
5. Morton Horwitz and his critics: a conflict of narratives
6. The elusive transformation
7. Method and politics: Morton Horwitz on lawyers' uses of history
8. E.P. Thompson's legacies
9. The constitution of liberal order at the troubled beginnings of the modern state
Part III. History and Historicism in Legal History and Argument. 10. Historicism in legal scholarship
11. Critical legal histories
12. The past as authority and as social critic: stabilizing and destabilizing functions of history in legal argument
13. Taming the past: histories of liberal society in American legal thought
14. Originalism and nostalgic traditionalism
15. Undoing historical injustice.
Summary
"Lawyers and judges often make arguments based on history - on the authority of precedent and original constitutional understandings. They argue both to preserve the inspirational, heroic past and to discard its darker pieces - such as feudalism and slavery, the tyranny of princes and priests, and the subordination of women. In doing so, lawyers tame the unruly, ugly, embarrassing elements of the past, smoothing them into reassuring tales of progress. In a series of essays and lectures written over forty years, Robert W. Gordon describes and analyses how lawyers approach the past and the strategies they use to recruit history for present use while erasing or keeping at bay its threatening or inconvenient aspects. Together, the corpus of work featured in Taming the Past offers an analysis of American law and society and its leading historians since 1900"-- Provided by publisher.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Location
STA
Call Number
KF352 .G67 2017
Language
English
ISBN
9781107193239 (hardcover)
1107193230 (hardcover)
9781316644003
1316644006
1107193230 (hardcover)
9781316644003
1316644006
Record Appears in