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UF Law Faculty Publications

Legal History

Legal history

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Unframing Legal Reasoning: A Cyclical Theory Of Legal Evolution, Larry A. Dimatteo Apr 2018

Unframing Legal Reasoning: A Cyclical Theory Of Legal Evolution, Larry A. Dimatteo

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article draws from legal history to inform a part of legal theory. The legal history examination focuses on two theories of legal development - Henry Sumner Maine's "progression thesis" and Nathan Isaacs's "cycle theory." After examining these two theories of legal development, the analysis shifts to how legal history informs theories of legal reasoning. There are numerous long-standing debates on how "law" should be interpreted. These debates are replicated in the question of how "contracts" should be interpreted. Contract law and contract interpretation will be the focus in examining how history informs legal theory, and more specifically, legal reasoning. …


Mr. Peabody's Improbable Legal Intellectual History, Mark Fenster Jan 2016

Mr. Peabody's Improbable Legal Intellectual History, Mark Fenster

UF Law Faculty Publications

Legal intellectual history, I suggest in this Paper, is the street sweeper in the parade of law’s history and its use of history. Lawyers and legal academics want great, important figures, cases, and theories with and against which they can do battle. The student-edited law reviews prefer bold, clear claims that explain why one answer to an historical question presented will bring justice, while a competing answer is manifestly unjust; why one past approach lacks principle or created worse consequences; or how one theory or another can explain all manner of thorny legal issues which bedevils academics and practitioners. Viewing …


Antitrust Energy, D. Daniel Sokol, Barak Orbach Mar 2012

Antitrust Energy, D. Daniel Sokol, Barak Orbach

UF Law Faculty Publications

Marking the centennial anniversary of Standard Oil Co. v. United States, we argue that much of the critique of antitrust enforcement and the skepticism about its social significance suffer from “Nirvana fallacy” — comparing existing and feasible policies to ideal normative policies, and concluding that the existing and feasible ones are inherently inefficient because of their imperfections. Antitrust law and policy have always been and will always be imperfect. However, they are alive and kicking. The antitrust discipline is vibrant, evolving, and global. This essay introduces a number of important innovations in scholarship related to Standard Oil and its modern …


The Symbols Of Governance: Thurman Arnold And Post-Realist Legal Theory, Mark Fenster Oct 2003

The Symbols Of Governance: Thurman Arnold And Post-Realist Legal Theory, Mark Fenster

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article is an effort to provide both the intellectual context of Thurman Arnold's work and, through his work, a better sense of where and how the study of law turned after realism. The article is in five parts. Part I describes Arnold's relationship with legal realism, looking at the earliest part of his academic career when, as a mainstream realist, he performed empirical studies of local and state court systems. Part II is Arnold's proposed field of "Political Dynamics," an interdisciplinary approach to the symbols of law, politics, and economics. Part III considers Arnold's authorial voice in Symbols and …


A Different Sort Of Justice: The Informal Courts Of Public Opinion In Antebellum South Carolina, Elizabeth Dale Apr 2003

A Different Sort Of Justice: The Informal Courts Of Public Opinion In Antebellum South Carolina, Elizabeth Dale

UF Law Faculty Publications

Studies of nineteenth century legal history assume that the antebellum South, and antebellum South Carolina in particular, had a legal culture shaped by honor culture and marked by the hierarchical assumptions and extralegal violence that honor culture engendered. In this article, I offer a modification of that well-established account. While I do not question the influence of honor on South Carolina's antebellum legal culture, I suggest that the state had a second, shame-based system of popular justice, in which women played a prominent role. As was the case with honor culture, this second form of extralegal justice, which I have …