Americanization of the Common Law: The Impact of Legal Change on Massachusetts Society, 1760-1830
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Description
When I began my research for this book several years ago, I hypothesized that the American Revolution was an event of such transcendent importance that it must have affected the course of American law. To text my hypothesis I decided to study the legal system of one American states, Massachusetts, for the fifteen-year period before the coming of independence to observe both the short-run and the long-run impact of the Revolution. My research disclosed that the law of Massachusetts did change substantially in the seventy years between 1760 and 1830 in a variety of ways. The various changes in the law, I became convinced, also reflected more basic changes in American thought and society over the same seventy-year period. Although the evidence was not always as clear of overwhelming as I might have liked, I tried to interpret the historical data before me so as to portray my sense of the social and intellectual change that must have accompanied postrevolutionary legal change. Even for those who disagree with my interpretations, I hope that his book can serve and independent function of making available to legal and historical scholars the vast quantity of source material heretofore buried in courthouse files and archives throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In my research for this study I sought to read not only all published statutory and judicial material for Massachusetts between 1760 and 1830 but also all available manuscript material, including unpublished judicial opinions, lawyers’ notes, and, most commonly, records of pleadings, judgments, and other papers incorporated into official court files. Much of the manuscript material, especially that contained in the court files, is extremely repetitive and is of little interest to the legal historian. Some of the material, however, is not repetitive. I have tried to cite all the nonrepetitive material either in the text or in the notes and to construct and index that will guide a reader to his topic of interest. I hope that these efforts will enable future students of particular subjects in the legal history of Massachusetts to pinpoint precise sources without having to undertake the same systematic search of all the sources that I did.
Publication Date
1975
Recommended Citation
Nelson, William E., "Americanization of the Common Law: The Impact of Legal Change on Massachusetts Society, 1760-1830" (1975). Faculty Books & Edited Works. 543.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-books-edited-works/543
