Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in European Law
Americanization Of The Common Law: The Intellectual Migration Meets The Great Migration, David Thomas Konig
Americanization Of The Common Law: The Intellectual Migration Meets The Great Migration, David Thomas Konig
Chicago-Kent Law Review
This essay is an appreciation of William E. Nelson’s Americanization of the Common Law: The Impact of Legal Change on Massachusetts Society, 1760–1830 (1975) and the complementary study published six years later as Dispute and Conflict Resolution in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, 1725–1825 (1981). The essay places Nelson’s research project in the immediate context of historical writing on colonial New England at the time of their publication but steps back from that narrow context to identify the significance of the book in the long trajectory of great legal historical writing on the Anglo-American legal tradition.
Law For The Empire: The Common Law In Colonial America And The Problem Of Legal Diversity, Lauren Benton, Kathryn Walker
Law For The Empire: The Common Law In Colonial America And The Problem Of Legal Diversity, Lauren Benton, Kathryn Walker
Chicago-Kent Law Review
In laboring to uncover the legal origins of the American Revolution, historians of law in early America often separated the field from the comparative legal history of empires. William E. Nelson does not explicitly set out to place American colonial legal history in a global context in The Common Law in Colonial America. But in analyzing legal diversity and identifying elements of early legal convergence, Nelson does address key questions within the comparative history of empire and law. This article surveys Nelson’s contributions and places them alongside two other approaches to the study of colonial legal diversity and the constitution …