Approaching American legal history from a new perspective, this text employs cases and other legal documents to reveal the law's underlying culture. American Legal History provides a comprehensive selection of the most important documents, which integrate the history of public and private law from America's colonial origins to the present. It devotes special attention to the interaction of social and legal change, shows how legal ideas developed in tandem with specific historical events, and reveals a rich legal culture unique to America. Introductions and instructive headnotes accompany each document, tying legal developments to broader historical themes and providing a social and political context essential to an understanding of the history of law in America.

This second edition is fully updated as well as expanded. The authors have revised the sections on the colonial, pre-Civil War, and immediate post-World War II periods, and have added material on the most recent developments in American constitutional and legal history. Special attention is paid to issues of death and dying, criminal justice, environmentalism, and feminist critique of the law. Offering a thorough examination of both public and private law, American Legal History is essential for students and teachers of constitutional and legal history, the judicial process, and the effects of law on society.