Freedom Bound is about the origins of modern America - a history of colonizing, work and civic identity from the beginnings of English presence on the mainland until the Civil War. It is a history of migrants and migrations, of colonizers and colonized, of households and servitude and slavery, and of the freedom all craved and some found. Above all it is a history of the law that framed the entire process. Freedom Bound tells how colonies were planted in occupied territories, how they were...

A bold new interpretation of Nat Turner and the slave rebellion that stunned the American SouthIn 1831 Virginia, Nat Turner led a band of Southampton County slaves in a rebellion that killed fifty-five whites, mostly women and children. After more than two months in hiding, Turner was captured, and quickly convicted and executed. In the Matter of Nat Turner penetrates the historical caricature of Turner as befuddled mystic and self-styled Baptist preacher ...

For many inside and outside the legal academy, the right place to look for law is in constitutions, statutes, and judicial opinions. This book looks for law in the “wrong places”—sites and spaces in which no formal law appears. These may be geographic regions beyond the reach of law, everyday practices ungoverned or ungovernable by law, or works of art that have escaped law’s constraints.Looking for Law in All the Wrong Places brings together essays by leading scholars of ...

This collection of seventeen original essays reshapes the field of early American legal history not by focusing simply on law, or even on the relationship between law and society, but by using the concept of “legality” to explore the myriad ways in which the people of early America ordered their relationships with one another, whether as individuals, groups, classes, communities, or states.Addressing issues of gender, ethnicity, family, patriarchy, culture, and dependence, contribu...

For more than a century, law schools have trained students to 'think like a lawyer'. In these times of legal crisis, both in legal education and in global society, what does that mean for the rest of us? In this book, thirty leading international scholars - including Louis Assier-Andrieu, Marianne Constable, Yves Dezalay, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Bryant G. Garth, Peter Goodrich, Duncan Kennedy, Martti Koskenniemi, Shaun McVeigh, Samuel Moyn, Annelise Riles, Charles F. Sabel and William H....

Some of the most exciting and innovative legal scholarship has been driven by historical curiosity. Legal history today comes in a fascinating array of shapes and sizes, from microhistory to global intellectual history. Legal history has expanded beyond traditional parochial boundaries to become increasingly international and comparative in scope and orientation. Drawing on scholarship from around the world, and representing a variety of methodological approaches, areas of expertise, and r...