- Description
- 1 online resource (xi, 449 pages) : illustrations, portraits.
- Summary
- "When Americans imagine their legal system, it is the adversarial trial--dominated by dueling larger-than-life lawyers undertaking grand public performances--that first comes to mind. But as award-winning author Amalia Kessler reveals in this engrossing history, it was only in the turbulent decades before the Civil War that adversarialism became a defining American practice and ideology, displacing alternative, more judge-driven approaches to procedure. By drawing on a broad range of methods and source--and by recovering neglected influences (including from Europe)--the author shows how the emergence of the American adversarial legal culture was a product not only of developments internal to law, but also of wider socioeconomic, political, and cultural debates over whether and how to undertake market regulation and pursue racial equality. As a result, adversarialism came to play a key role in defining American legal institutions and practices, as well as national identity"--Back cover.
- Series Statement
- Yale Law Library series in legal history and reference.
- Uniform Title
- Inventing American exceptionalism (Online)
- Yale Law Library series in legal history and reference.
- Alternative Title
- Inventing American exceptionalism (Online)
- Subject
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 361-432) and index.
- Access (note)
- Access restricted to authorized users.
- Contents
- The "natural elevation" of equity : quasi-inquisitorial procedure and the early nineteenth-century resurgence of equity-- A troubled inheritance : the English procedural tradition and its lawyer-driven reconfiguration in early nineteenth-century New York-- The non-revolutionary Field Code : democratization, docket pressures, and codification -- Cultural foundations of American adversarialism : civic republicanism and the decline of equity's quasi-inquisitorial tradition -- Market freedom and adversarial adjudication : the nineteenth-century American debates over (European) conciliation courts and the problem of procedural ordering -- Freedman's Bureau exception : the triumph of due (adversarial) process and the dawn of Jim Crow -- Conclusion : The question of American exceptionalism and the lessons of history.
- LCCN
- 2016944171
- OCLC
- ssj0001796339
- Author
Kessler, Amalia D.
- Title
Inventing American exceptionalism [electronic resource] : the origins of American adversarial legal culture, 1800-1877 / Amalia D. Kessler.
- Imprint
New Haven ; London : Yale University Press, [2017]
- Series
Yale Law Library series in legal history and reference.
Yale Law Library series in legal history and reference.
- Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 361-432) and index.
- Access
Access restricted to authorized users.
- Connect to:
- Chronological Term
1800-1899