A History of American Law

Lawrence M. Friedman is the Marion Rice Kirkwood Professor of Law at Stanford Law School.

Prologue

Part I: The Beginnings: American Law in the Colonial Period

Part II: From the Revolution to the Middle of the Nineteenth Century:1776-1850
Chapter 1 The Republic of Bees
Chapter 2 Outposts of the Law: The Frontier and the Civil Law Fringe
Chapter 3 Law and the Economy: 1776-1850
Chapter 4 The Law of Personal Status: Wives, Paupers, and Slaves
Chapter 5 An American Law of Property
Chapter 6 The Law of Commerce and Trade
Chapter 7 Crime and Punishment: And a Footnote on Tort
Chapter 8 The Bar and Its Works

Part III: American Law to the Close of the Nineteenth Century
Chapter 1 Blood and Gold: Some Main Themes in the Law in the Last Half of the Nineteenth Century
Chapter 2 Judges and Courts: 1850-1900
Chapter 3 Procedure and Practice: An Age of Reform
Chapter 4 The Land and Other Property
Chapter 5 Administrative Law and Regulation of Business
Chapter 6 Torts
Chapter 7 The Underdogs: 1850-1900
Chapter 8 The Law of Corporations
Chapter 9 Commerce, Labor, and Taxation
Chapter 10 Crime and Punishment
Chapter 11 The Legal Profession: The Training and Literature of Law
Chapter 12 The Legal Profession: At Work

Part IV: The Twentieth Century
Chapter 1 Leviathan Comes of Age
Chapter 2 The Growth of the Law
Chapter 3 Internal Legal Culture in the Twentieth Century: Lawyers, Judges, and Law Books
Chapter 4 Regulation, Welfare, and the Rise of Environmental Law
Chapter 5 Crime and Punishment in the Twentieth Century
Chapter 6 Family Law in the Twentieth Century

Epilogue A Final Word
Bibliographical Essay
Index