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Reassessing Hurst: A Transatlantic Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2011

David Sugarman
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Extract

Today, the history of law and society has become an exciting growth industry. But just a couple of decades ago this possibility would have seemed implausible. Indeed, when Willard Hurst became professor of law in Madison in 1937, modern legal history was, to put it kindly, dead. Reviving this moribund discipline required more than imagination and an acute awareness of the point and nature of law. Sleeping Beauty had to be woken with a kiss, and Hurst surely brought a serious, tenacious passion to his vocation. Through exhortation, inspiration, and sheer determination, he attempted to resuscitate a huge domain.

Type
Commentaries
Information
Law and History Review , Volume 18 , Issue 1: Engaging Willard Hurst: A Symposium , Spring 2000 , pp. 215 - 222
Copyright
Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 2000

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References

1. On Frankfurter's Anglophilia, see, for example, Cosgrove, R. A., Our Lady the Common Law (New York: New York University Press, 1987), 219.Google Scholar

2. See Sugarman, David, “The Law and Legal Institutions,” in The Oxford Reader's Companion to Charles Dickens, ed. Schlicke, Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 70, 230–31, 297, 316–22.Google Scholar

3. See Sugarman, David, Law, Modernity and “the Peculiarities of the English” (Madison: Insitute for Legal Studies, 1987).Google Scholar

4. Hartog, Hendrik, “Snakes in Ireland: A Conversation with Willard Hurst,” Law and History Review 12 (1994): 370–90, 372.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Hurst, James Willard, The Growth of American Law: The Law Makers (Boston: Little, Brown, 1950).Google Scholar

6. For example, whereas The Growth of American Law contained twenty-nine brief references discussing the English heritage, Law and the Conditions of Freedom in the Nineteenth-Century United States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1956) contained four.

7. See Purcell, E. A., The Crisis of Democratic Theory (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1973).Google Scholar

8. The author's interview with H. L. A. Hart, 9 November 1988.

9. See, for example, Davis, K. C., “The Future of Judge-Made Law in England,” Columbia Law Review 61 (1961): 201–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goldstein, A. L., “Research into the Administration of Criminal Law, British Journal of Criminology 6 (1966): 27–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. See Twining, William, Law in Context (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), chaps. 1–3.Google Scholar

11. See Robert Gordon, W. and Sugarman, David, “Richard C. B. Risk,” in Essays in Canadian Law, vol. 8, ed. Baker, G. Blaine and Phillips, Jim (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), chap. 1.Google Scholar

12. I am grateful to John Baker for providing this information.

13. The author's discussion with Hurst on 23 May 1992.

14. See, generally, Ross, Dorothy, The Origins of American Social Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

15. See, for example, Atiyah, P. S., The Rise and Fall of Freedom of Contract (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Sugarman, David, “Legal Theory and the Common Law Mind,” Legal Theory and Common Law, ed. Twining, W. (Oxford: Blackwells, 1986), 26–61Google Scholar; Wieacker, Franz, A History of Private Law in Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Hoeflich, Michael, Roman and Civil Law and the Development of Anglo-American Jurisprudence (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997).Google Scholar

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17. For a similar analysis of Maitland, see Vernon, James, “Narrating the Constitution,” in Re-Reading the Constitution: New Narratives in the Political History of England's Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Vernon, James (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 204–38.Google Scholar

18. Auerbach, Jerold, Unequal Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 170–72Google Scholar

19. Notwithstanding their significant differences, such as Maitland's privileging of the early history of law, his problematization of a major break between modern and premodern law and society, his aversion to functionalism, his commitment to comparative history, and his exquisite style of writing.

20. See Burrow, J. W., Whigs and Liberals (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).Google Scholar

21. See Banks-Smith, N., “The Dictators of Dirt,” The Guardian, May 19, 1999, p. 22.Google Scholar