James, Eldon Revare. A List of Legal Treatises Printed in the British Colonies and the American States Before 1801. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1934. 52 pp. Reprinted 2002 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN 1-58477-143-7. Cloth. $50. * A bibliography of items published in the British colonies and the United States between 1687-1800, organized by date with complete title page transcriptions. During these years most law books were printed for the benefit of the officer or layman who was called upon to act in a legal capacity. Therefore legal manuals, formbooks, pocket-books, young clerk's vade mecums, justice of the peace manuals, the Conductor Generalis and the like provided the legal sources of the time. This bibliography contains occasional annotations regarding the various printings. Originally published in Harvard Legal Essays.

DePuy, Henry F. A Bibliography of the English Colonial Treaties with the American Indians. New York: The Lenox Club, 1917. [108] pp. Reprinted 2001 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN 1-58477-163-1. Cloth. $50. * Many of the records of the various treaties with the Indians exist only in manuscript. This bibliography locates and describes fifty treaties that were separately printed in small print quantities and thus are exceedingly rare. For each treaty De Puy provides full collation, a brief synopsis of the contents, an illustration, and the location of copies in principal libraries and private collections. See Besterman, A World Bibliography of Bibliographies 352.

This collection of outstanding essays in the history of early American law is designed to meet the demand for a basic introduction to the literature of colonial and early United States law. Eighteen essays from historical and legal journals by outstanding authorities explore the major themes in American legal history from colonial beginnings to the early nineteenth century. Originally published in 1969. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Although deconstruction has become a popular catchword, as an intellectual movement it has never entirely caught on within the university. For some in the academy, deconstruction, and Jacques Derrida in particular, are responsible for the demise of accountability in the study of literature. Countering these facile dismissals of Derrida and deconstruction, Herman Rapaport explores the incoherence that has plagued critical theory since the 1960s and the resulting legitimacy crisis in the humanities. Against the backdrop of a rich, informed discussion of Derrida's writings -- and how they have been misconstrued by critics and admirers alike -- The Theory Mess investigates the vicissitudes of Anglo-American criticism over the past thirty years and proposes some possibilities for reform.

The first guide to legal research intended for the many nonspecialists who need to enter this arcane and often tricky area

An essential, rigorous, and lively introduction to the beginnings of American law. How did American colonists transform British law into their own? What were the colonies' first legal institutions, and who served in them? And why did the early Americans develop a passion for litigation that continues to this day? In Law and People in Colonial America, Peter Charles Hoffer tells the story of early American law from its beginnings on the British mainland to its maturation during the crisis of the American Revolution. For the men and women of colonial America, Hoffer explains, law was a pervasive influence in everyday life. Because it was their law, the colonists continually adapted it to fit changing circumstances. They also developed a sense of legalism that influenced virtually all social, economic, and political relationships. This sense of intimacy with the law, Hoffer argues, assumed a transforming power in times of crisis. In the midst of a war for independence, American revolutionaries used their intimacy with the law to explain how their rebellion could be lawful, while legislators wrote republican constitutions that would endure for centuries. Today the role of law in American life is more pervasive than ever. And because our system of law involves a continuing dialogue between past and present, interpreting the meaning of precedent and of past legislation, the study of legal history is a vital part of every citizen's basic education. Taking advantage of rich new scholarship that goes beyond traditional approaches to view slavery as a fundamental cultural and social institution as well as an economic one, this second edition includes an extensive, entirely new chapter on colonial and revolutionary-era slave law. Law and People in Colonial America is a lively introduction to early American law. It makes for essential reading.

In this book seven distinguished historians explain how a national political culture developed in America. A political culture is both the collectivity of a community's values and a mode of behavior--an end as well as a process of obtaining that end which is always changing. Essays by J.G.A. Pocock, Jack Greene, Richard Vernier, Andrew Robertson, Joyce Appleby, Lawrence Goldman, and Rebecca Starr examine issues such as how British institutions and the common law were modified by unique colonial American experiences; how election rituals transformed the American political culture of deference into an expanded, abstract world of electoral opinion knit together by newspapers; how the South developed its own political culture by the end of the eighteenth century that persisted well beyond the Civil War; and more.

Winner of the Bancroft Prize In this brilliantly original book, written for the general reader, the American past becomes richly meaningful to the present.