History of American Law

This course will investigate the development of American law from the colonial period through the twentieth century. It will focus on the dialogic relationship between the nation’s substantive law and the contemporaneous social, economic, and political conditions. We will study the influences of the English legal traditions on colonial law, how the American environment modified those traditions up through the beginning of the nineteenth century; the changes in the law of status, domestic relations, and crimes as well as the interrelationship between law and economic development throughout the 19th century, and the major changes in American law occurring during the twentieth century.