Litigation Nation

In this engaging and comprehensive survey of American history via the courtroom, legal historian Hoffer persuasively argues that intense litigation signals a period of social upheaval, 'a temporary disparity between new and old social norms.' Each chapter focuses on a cluster of case studies that illuminate a contested 'phase change' in American identity and culture. For example, he argues, real estate title cases in the colonial U.S. gave voice to mutual frustrations between yeoman farmers and a new commercial elite. Before the Civil War, fraud suits connected to slave trading illuminated increasing Southern anxiety about the future of the institution; cases in the North regarding back pay and the legality of craft unions bespoke concerns about the dignity of the individual in industrial society. The second half of the book posits that litigation helped extend the rights of the individual, as in stockholder suits against the fraudulent machinations of Gilded Age railroad financiers and consumer class action torts against corporate wrongdoing. Chapters regarding changes in divorce and the landmark civil rights lawsuits in the mid-20th century illuminate shifting paradigms in gender and race relations, respectively. This eloquent, well-organized book will particularly delight academic readers new to legal history and will give those in the legal field a greater sense of their profession’s role in shaping America’s culture and character. * Publishers Weekly *
Using carefully chosen examples to illustrate the history of litigation in the United States, Peter Charles Hoffer provides a clear and readable account of how lawsuits both shape and are shaped by the social and cultural context in which they arise. The chapters range over topics such as libel and divorce through civil rights and products liability, and though each focuses on different eras in U.S. history Hoffer brings out the ways in which earlier cases resonate with more recent ones. Readers without any background in the law will find the history engaging and illuminating. -- Mark Tushnet, Harvard Law School