Practicing Law in Frontier California

Gordon Morris Bakken author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:University of Nebraska Press

Published:1st Mar '06

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Practicing Law in Frontier California cover

In Practicing Law in Frontier California Gordon Morris Bakken combines collective biography with an analysis of the function of the bar in a rapidly changing socioeconomic setting. Drawing on manuscript collections, Bakken considers hundreds of men and women who came to California to practice law during the gold rush and later, their reasons for coming, their training, and their usefulness to clients during a period of rapid population growth and social turmoil. He shows how law practice changed over the decades with the establishment of large firms and bar associations, how the state's boom-and-bust economy made debt collection the lawyer's bread and butter, and how personal injury and criminal cases and questions of property rights were handled. In Bakken's book frontier lawyers become complex human beings, contributing to and protecting the social and economic fabric of society, expanding their public roles even as their professional expertise becomes more narrowly specialized.

"Bakken has made good use of the manuscript collections of unknown but active and interesting lawyers whose careers helped to make law accessible to individuals in a highly dynamic society."—The American Journal of Legal History
"The study makes a valuable contribution by applying analytical criminal justice concepts to an important but frequently unnoticed portion of the United States."—The American Academy of Political and Social Science
"Anyone interested in California history or the place of lawyers in it will find Bakken's book a lively and well-documented work that hints that many of the legal issues now debated in California can be traced to the state's frontier days."—San Francisco Daily Journal

ISBN: 9780803262607

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 340g

192 pages