Inventing American Exceptionalism: The Origins of American Adversarial Legal Culture, 1800-1877

By Amalia D. Kessler

Book Overview

A highly engaging account of the developments--not only legal, but also socioeconomic, political, and cultural--that gave rise to Americans' distinctively lawyer-driven legal culture When Americans imagine their legal system, it is the adversarial trial--dominated by dueling larger-than-life lawyers undertaking grand public performances--that first comes to mind. But as award-winning author Amalia Kessler reveals in this engrossing history, it was only in the turbulent decades before the Civil War that adversarialism became a defining American practice and ideology, displacing alternative, more judge-driven approaches to procedure. By drawing on a broad range of methods and sources--and by recovering neglected influences (including from Europe)--the author shows how the emergence of the American adversarial legal culture was a product not only of developments internal to law, but also of wider socioeconomic, political, and cultural debates over whether and how to undertake market regulation and pursue racial equality. As a result, adversarialism came to play a key role in defining American legal institutions and practices, as well as national identity.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300198078
• ISBN13: 9780300198072
• Release Date: January 2017
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 464 Pages
• Weight: 1.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.1" x 9.3"