American Legal History
Syllabus, American Legal History
Spring 2005
Professor Elizabeth Dale
http://home.mindspring.com/~edale1/
TEXTS:
All the materials listed below may be found on line at Cases and Materials: An Introduction to Legal History (click on the title or go to my webpage and click on the title there).
On line resources (free):
ASSIGNMENTS:
Grades for the course will be based on a
seminar paper of ten pages. The subject of the paper will be assigned during
lesson 4, the paper will be due the last week of classes.
Part
I: Law in the Colonial Period
Lesson 1: Introduction to
legal history
Lesson 2: Law in the
Early Colonial Period:
Winthrop’s
Model of Christian Charity (1630)
The
Pynchon Court Record (1639-1640)
Laws
and Liberties (1649)
Part
II: The Eighteenth Century: Revolution and
Lesson 3:
Declaration of
Independence (1776)
Constitution of
Virginia (1776)
Constitution
of Delaware (1776)
Lesson 4: Law in the
states, the example of
Records
from the York County, South Carolina Court (1788)
Records
from the York County, South Carolina Court (1796)
***Assignment of seminar paper
topics***
Part
III: Law and Social Order in the Nineteenth Century
Lesson 5: Promoting the
Economy.
Dartmouth College (1819)
Gibbons v. Ogden (1824)
Enfield Toll Bridge v. Connecticut River
(
Charles River Bridge Case
(1837)
Lesson 6: Laws relating to people (Labor, the Law of Slavery, and Family Law).
Labor:
Farwell v. Boston and
Worcester Railroad (Mass 1842)
Commonwealth
v. Hunt (Mass 1842)
Slavery:
State
v. Mann (N.C. 1829)
Commonwealth
v. Aves (Mass 1836)
Fugitive Slave
Law (1850)
Family law:
Nickerson’s Case
(N.Y. 1837)
Barry v.
Mercein (N.Y. 1840)
Seneca Falls
Declaration of Sentiments (1843)
Lesson 7: Crime and
Punishment (juvenile justice)
De
Beaumont and de Tocqueville on the American Penitentiary System (1833)
Brief
History of Juvenile Justice
Illinois
v. Turner (
Mansfield’s Case
(
Commonwealth
v. Fisher (
Lesson 8: Changes in
tort law
Brown v.
Kendall (
Thomas
v. Winchester (
McPherson v. Buick
Motor Co. (
Lesson 9: The Legal
Profession: Lawyers and Judges in the 19th Century
“Beginnings
of Columbia Law School in New York, 1858-1862”
Bradwell v. Illinois
(1873)
Biography of
Kate Kane Rossi, from
“Judicial
Corruption in New York City” (1869)
Lesson 10: Law and the
status of minorities at the end of the Nineteenth Century
Civil
Rights Cases (1883)
Plessy v. Fergusen
(1896)
Baylies v. Curry I
(1889)
Baylies v. Curry II
(1889)
Lesson 11: Law and the Economy at the beginning of the century
Holden v. Hardy (1898)
Lochner v. New York (1905)
Muller v. Oregon (1908)
Loewe v. Lawlor (1908)
Lesson 12: The Expanding
Government: The New Deal
West
Coast Hotel v. Parrish (1937)
Palko v. Connecticut
(1937)
United
States v. Carolene Products (1938)
Lesson 13: Brown v. Board of Education and Beyond
Brown v.
Board of Education (1954)
Baker v. Carr
(1962)
Loving v. Virginia
(1967)
Lesson 14: From the
Mapp
v. Ohio (1963)
Gideon v. Wainwright (1963)
Miranda v. Arizona (1966)
Griswold
v. Connecticut (1965)
Roe v. Wade (1973)
Planned
Parenthood of Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992) (O’Connor opinion)
United
States v. Lopez (1995)
Lesson 15: Wrap up