Local Matters

In the face of Alexis de Tocqueville's concerns about the dangers of American democracy, Christopher Waldrep and Donald G. Nieman note, he found hope in an American appreciation for constitutionalism and the law. America's legalism, he believed, should prevent the realization of what he saw as the potential for majoritarian tyranny in a democratic nation. In this collection of essays, Local Matters, the editors Waldrep and Nieman have provided, from a number of scholars, important discussions of that devotion to law Tocqueville observed among Americans. Examining how institutions operated on the ground, these essays emphasize that Americans' apparent dedication to legalism was a highly complex matter. With their focus on the nineteenth-century South, moreover, they do much to reveal the interactions of race, class, and gender in a society where ideals of democracy and hierarchy created a tension that could never be easily resolved. The essays cover virtually the whole of the nineteenth century, ranging from the classic slavery cases of the antebellum era to the problems of law and legal procedure in the chaotic years of Reconstruction and its aftermath. Following a valuable introduction by Waldrep and Nieman—one that effectively ties the subsequent pieces together—four of the essays deal with the era of slavery. Sally Hadden and Timothy S. Huebner offer important discussions of how southern courts handled due process issues for slaves accused of crimes, often, though not always, showing great respect for established legal procedure. Judith Kelleher Schafer then looks at Louisiana, a state whose unique traditions of criminal procedure she highlights, demonstrating how a lack of concern for due process underlined the nature of slavery itself, while illuminating for comparison the character of the English-based traditions dominant elsewhere. In a particularly rich essay, Ariela Gross examines slave cases from antebellum Natchez, Mississippi, to describe a host of relationships among class, political culture, slavery—including slaves' views of the law—and economy in what she demonstrates was a particularly revealing setting

Constitutionalism · Democracy · Economic Justice · Legal culture · Legalism (Western philosophy · Political science · Politics · Race (biology · Sociology · State (computer science · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Gender Studies · History · Law