Reason Over Precedents: Origins of American Legal Thought

(Hardback)

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This legal and intellectual history shows how the education of American lawyers between 1779 and 1829 manifested a unique and distinct process of legal thought into the United States. This new American legal thought, based upon ideas imported from the works of European natural law writers, had a significant impact on the creation of a distinctly American legal system and was, and continues to be, instrumental in shaping American society.

Reviews

.,."a useful and needed examination in detail of certain aspects of legal institutions in this critical period. Particularly notable is its careful attention to some of the early treatises used by American lawyers. It is most valuable for its description of the histories, curricula, instructors, and students at the proprietary law schools that flourished at that time. Klafter has shed new and valuable light on these important institutions."-Law and History Review
...a useful and needed examination in detail of certain aspects of legal institutions in this critical period. Particularly notable is its careful attention to some of the early treatises used by American lawyers. It is most valuable for its description of the histories, curricula, instructors, and students at the proprietary law schools that flourished at that time. Klafter has shed new and valuable light on these important institutions.-Law and History Review
..."a useful and needed examination in detail of certain aspects of legal institutions in this critical period. Particularly notable is its careful attention to some of the early treatises used by American lawyers. It is most valuable for its description of the histories, curricula, instructors, and students at the proprietary law schools that flourished at that time. Klafter has shed new and valuable light on these important institutions."-Law and History Review

Author Bio

CRAIG EVAN KLAFTER is Research Fellow in the Department of History at the University of Southampton, England. He received his education at the University of Chicago and Oxford University and has held lectureships at the Universities of Manchester and Southampton. He has contributed articles to the American Journal of Legal History and the Journal of the Early Republic and his essay, The Americanization of Blackstone's Commentaries, was co-winner of the 1992 Webb-Smith Essay Prize.