William Fisher

Fall 2001

Part I: The Organization of the Polity

A. Judicial Review and Constitutional Law

  • The Federal Constitution & Amendments 1-15 [M 1-11]
  • The Federalist, No. 78 (Alexander Hamilton) (1788) [M 12-16]
  • Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch (5 U.S.) 137 (1803) [M 17-28]
  • Fletcher v. Peck, 6 Cranch (10 U.S.) 87 (1810) [M 29-33]
  • Gardner v. Village of Newburgh, 2 Johns. Ch. 162 (N.Y. 1816) [M 34-37]
  • Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Judge Spencer Roane (Sept. 6, 1819) [M 38-39]
  • Willam Fisher, “Ideology, Religion, and the Constitutional Protection of Private Property, 1760-1860,” 39 Emory L.J. 66, 94-121 (1990) [M 40-68]
  • Scott v. Sanford, 19 How. (60 U.S.) 393 (1856) [M 69-83]
  • Wynehamer v. The People, 3 Kern. (13 N.Y.) 378 (1856) [M 84-99]
  • Coppage v. Kansas, 236 U.S. 1 (1915) [M 100-109]
  • Thomas Grey, “Langdell’s Orthodoxy,” 45 U. Pitt. L. Rev. 1 (1983) [M 110-162]

B. The Differentiation of Authority: State, City, and Private Corporation

  • Oscar and Mary Handlin, Commonwealth, 51-54, 87-105 (1947) [M 163-184]
  • Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 4 Wheat. (17 U.S.) 518 (1819) [M 185-196]
  • Morton Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1870-1960: The Crisis of Legal Orthodoxy (1992), pp. 65-107 [M 197-238]

Part II: The Development of Legal Doctrine

(You should read all of the “methodological interludes” plus the materials under four of the six doctrinal headings)

A. Contracts

  • Morton Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860 chpts. 1, 6 (1977)
  • Mills v. Wyman, 3 Pick. 207 (Mass. 1825)
  • Stark v. Parker, 19 Mass. 267 (1824)
  • Britton v. Turner, 6 N.H. 481 (1834)

Methodological Interlude: The Legitimation Argument

  • Peter Gabel & Jay Feinman, “Contract Law as Ideology,” in The Politics of Law 172-84 (1982)
  • R.W. Kostal, “Legal Justice, Social Justice,” 6 Law & Hist. Rev. 1 (1988)

B. Torts

  • Farwell v. Boston & Worcester R. Co., 4 Met. (45 Mass.) 49 (1842)
  • Walker v. Cronin, 107 Mass. 555 (1871)
  • Hough v. Railway Co., 100 U.S. 213 (1879)
  • Note, “Tortious Interference with Contractual Relations in the Nineteenth Century,” 93 Harv. L. Rev. 1510 (1980)

Methodological Interlude: The Economic Interpretation

  • Richard Posner, Economic Analysis of Law 21, 46-47 (3d ed. 1986)
  • Tullock, “Two Kinds of Legal Efficiency,” 8 Hofstra L. Rev. 659, 666-668 (1980)
  • Posner, “A Reply to Some Recent Criticisms,” 9 Hofstra L. Rev. 775, 781-84 (1981)
  • Rubin, “Why is the Common Law Efficient?,” 6 J. Leg. Stud. 51 (1977)

C. Criminal Law

  • William Nelson, “Emerging Notions of Modern Criminal Law in the Revolutionary Era: An Historical Perspective,” 42 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 450 (1967)
  • David Ray Papke, “Legitimate Illegitimacy: the Memoirs of Nineteenth-Century Professional Criminals,” 9 Leg. Stud. Forum 165 (1985)
  • Edward Ayers, Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the Nineteenth-Century South chpt. 1 (1984)

Methodological Interlude: Functionalism

  • Lawrence Friedman, Crime and Punishment in American History (1993), pp. 1-15

D. Family Law

  • Norma Basch, “The Emerging Legal History of Women in the United States: Property, Divorce, and the Constitution,” 12 Signs 97 (1986)
  • Lawrence Friedman, “Rights of Passage: Divorce Law in Historical Perspective,” 63 Ore. L. Rev. 649 (1984)
  • William Dean Howells, A Modern Instance chpt. 40 (1882)

Methodological Interlude: Storytelling

  • Carol Weisbrod, “Divorce Stories: Readings, Comments, and Questions on Law and Narrative,” 1991 B.Y.U. L. Rev. 143

E. Property

  • Stanley Katz, “Republicanism and the Law of Inheritance in the American Revolutionary Era,” 76 Mich. L. Rev. 1 (1977)
  • William Fisher, “The Law of the Land” (Ph.D. diss. 1991), chpt. 3

Methodological Interlude: Intellectual History

  • William Fisher, “Texts and Contexts: The Application of the Methodologies of Intellectual History to Legal History,” 49 Stanford Law Review 1065 (1997)
  • Gregory Alexander, Commodity and Propriety: Competing Visions of Property in American Legal Thought, 1776-1970 (1997), pp. 1-17

F. The Law of Slavery

  • Kenneth Stampp, The Peculiar Institution 206-16 (1956)
  • Snee v. Tice, 2 Bay 345 (S.C. 1802)
  • State v. Mann, 2 Dev. 263, 13 N.C. 269 (1829)
  • A. Leon Higginbotham, Suppmentary Materials on the Mann case
  • Andrew Fede, “Legitimized Violent Slave Abuse in the American South, 1619-1865: A Case Study of Law and Social Change in Six Southern States,” 29 Am. J. Leg. Hist. 93 (1985)
  • State v. Jim, 48 N.C. 348 (1856)
  • Gorman v. Campbell, 14 Ga. 137 (1853)

Methodological Interlude: Intellectual History (continued)

  • William Fisher, “Ideology and Imagery in the Law of Slavery,” in Paul Finkelman, ed., Slavery and the Law (1997) 43-85

Part III: The Legal Profession

  • Maxwell Bloomfield, “Upgrading the Professional Image,” in American Lawyers in a Changing Society, 1776-1876 136-190 (1976)
  • Alfred Konefsky, “Law and Culture in Antebellum Boston,” 40 Stan. L. Rev. 1119 (1988)
  • Lemuel Shaw, Address to Boston Lawyers (1827)
  • P.W. Grayson, “Vice Unmasked” (1830)
  • Robert Rantoul, “Oration at Scituate” (1836)
  • Harvard Law School Course of Study (1838)
  • Rufus Choate, “The Positions and Functions of the American Bar” (1845)
  • Herman Melville, “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (1853)
  • Harvard Law School Contracts Examination (1872)