Taming the Past: Essays on Law in History and History in Law (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781316644003)

Lawyers and judges often make arguments based on history - on the authority of precedent and original constitutional understandings. They argue both to preserve the inspirational, heroic past and to discard its darker pieces - such as feudalism and slavery, the tyranny of princes and priests, and the subordination of women. In doing so, lawyers tame the unruly, ugly, embarrassing elements of the past, smoothing them into reassuring tales of progress. In a series of essays and lectures written over forty years, Robert W. Gordon describes and analyses how lawyers approach the past and the strategies they use to recruit history for present use while erasing or keeping at bay its threatening or inconvenient aspects. Together, the corpus of work featured in Taming the Past offers an analysis of American law and society and its leading historians since 1900.

Author: Robert W. Gordon
ISBN-10: 1316644006
ISBN-13: 9781316644003
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 06/09/2017
Pages: 446
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.40lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 1.10d