The Legalist Reformation
Law, Politics, and Ideology in New York, 1920-1980
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10040239 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Randolph Bergstrom (University of California, Santa Barbara, corresponding author), William E Nelson |
| Year | 2002 |
| Volume | 89 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 270 |
| Publication date | 2002-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2700883 |
| OpenAlex | W2002069382 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 10 |
From humble origins in one state's courtrooms grew the ideology that came to define American social and legal culture, that “matured into the hope of the progressive world.” Decades of creative judging in a New York riven by conflict built case by case a new, socially responsive ideology prizing liberty, equality, dignity, and economic opportunity. That, argues William E. Nelson in this ambitious and important book, was The Legalist Reformation, a movement that not only changed law but “brought real liberty, equality and dignity to increasing numbers of New Yorkers.” Nelson's vision is expansive, his research prodigious, his analysis insightful, and his achievement impressive. How he reaches his conclusion is as valuable as the conclusion itself. Delving into all of the state's court records, sampling thousands of state and federal district trial court cases, and reading all appellate cases for these years, he founds his argument on the fullest range of New Yorkers' resort to law. This enables him to see ideology emerge from action, in suitors' claiming and judges' deciding. It connects—and shows disconnections in—a relationship too often assumed, trial judging and high courts' jurisprudence. And it provides lots of new stories to enrich and complicate our understanding, from fascinating illustrative cases—marriages annulled for Nazi sympathy, for example—to larger stories and analyses of developments in fields of law, such as business claiming on contracts. To discern and signify these developments in the sheer volume of this fresh research is scholarship of the first order, in itself a major contribution
Argument (complex analysis · Dignity · Ideology · Jurisprudence · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · State (computer science · Criminal Law and Evidence · Law · Law, Rights, and Freedoms · Legal Systems and Judicial Processes
Progressivism and States’ Rights
In the Winter of Our Discontent
Introduction
Favoritism Cannot Be Tolerated
Imagining the Administrative State
A Reevaluation of the New York Court of Appeals
From Public Interest to Private Rights
The Borrower's Tale
Unmanageable Risks
Charles Evans Hughes and the Strange Death of Liberal America
| Unique citing works | 10 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,42 |
| Citation span | 2002 - 2019 (18) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 10 |