Oxford University Press, USA
The Lost World of Classical Legal Thought: Law and Ideology in America, 1886-1937
Key Metrics
- William M Wiecek
- Oxford University Press, USA
- Paperback
- 9780195147131
- 9.26 X 6.24 X 0.81 inches
- 0.93 pounds
- Law > Legal History
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
American classical legal thought was forged in the heat of the social crises that punctuated the late nineteenth century. Fearing labor unions, immigrants, and working people generally, American elites, including those on the bench and bar, sought ways to repress disorder and prevent political majorities from using democratic processes to redistribute wealth and power. Classical legal thought provided a rationale that assured the legitimacy of the extant distribution of society's resources. It enabled the legal suppression of unions and the subordination of workers to management's authority.
As the twentieth-century U.S. economy grew in complexity, the antiregulatory, individualistic bias of classical legal thought became more and more distanced from reality. Brittle and dogmatic, legal ideology lost legitimacy in the eyes of both laypeople and ever-larger segments of the bar. It was at last abandoned in the constitutional revolution of 1937, but--as Wiecek argues in this detailed analysis--nothing has arisen since to replace it as an explanation of what law is and why courts have such broad power in a democratic society.
Author Bio
Professor Wiecek practiced law in New Hampshire and taught legal and constitutional history at the University of Missouri-Columbia for 16 years before coming to Syracuse. He has written or edited seven books, as well as numerous articles and chapters, on slavery and its abolition, republicanism, nineteenth-century constitutional development, nuclear power, and the United States Supreme Court.
Professor Wiecek has written a history of the United States Supreme Court from 1941 to 1953, covering the chief-justiceships of Harlan Fiske Stone and Fred Vinson, for the Holmes Devise History of the Supreme Court of the United States. He has taught courses in legal and constitutional history, constitutional law, property, race and law, corporations, civil procedure, and Roman law. He holds a joint appointment as Professor of History in the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. Professor Wiecek received the University Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award in 1997 and in 2001 the Chancellor’s Citation for Exceptional Academic Achievement, the university’s highest academic award.
Education
Professor Wiecek earned a B.A. from Catholic University, a LL.B. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Source: Syracuse University
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