Author Description

Law's Machinery Tells How Americans In An Age Of Industrialization Began To Think Of Law As A Tool, One That Could Be Forged And Reformed To Fit Their Needs Without Regard To The Traditional Ways Of Litigating Cases In Court. By Legislating A Code Of Practice Innovators Like The New York Attorney David Dudley Field And His Associates Across The Elite American Bar Attempted To Rebuild The Practice Of Law From The Ground Up In The Mid-nineteenth Century. While Many Of Their Reforms Proved Futile Or Misguided Over Time, Ultimately The Codifiers Succeeded In Making American Law A Machine Run By, And In The Interests Of, Professional Lawyers Like Themselves. Often Overlooked In Histories Of The World's Great Code Systems, The United States Settled On A Code Of Practice That Elevated Lawyers As The Dominant Force Among America's Legal Institutions. This Account Ranges Widely From The Jacksonian Era To The End Of The Gilded Age, From Industrializing Gotham To The Periphery Of The American West And Reconstruction South, From The Parlours Of Brooklyn Pastors And Merchants To The Ornamented Courthouses Of Wall Street. Drawing On Innovative Methods In Digital Legal History, Law's Machinery Offers A Sweeping Intellectual, Cultural, And Political History Of The Modernization Of American Legal Practice-- Provided By Publisher.