Barbara Y Welke

Willard Hurst and the Archipelago of American Legal Historiography

Leading works published since the 1980s relating to law and the modern administrative state that privilege economy and politics-work by scholars like William Novak tracing the nineteenth-century common law roots of the modern regulatory state, Stephen Skowronek on the construction of a national administrative state, and Martin Sklar on the intersection of reform with the rise of corporate capitalism in reshaping the political economy of the American state-remain intensely engaged with the work of Willard Hurst. Leading works published in the same period relating to law and the modern administrative state that privilege gender-work by scholars like Kathryn Kish Sklar on Florence Kelley and womens political culture, Linda Gordon on the welfare state, and Leslie Reagan on abortion-do not cite Hurst in the footnotes or, for the most part, in their bibliographies.1 For that matter, those from one sub-field do not cite the other and vice versa. There is a simple, innocuous explanation for these silences-we all have too much to read. Staying abreast of the most recent schol-

'Glimmers of Life:’ A Conversation with Hendrik Hartog

In January 1994, the Law and History Review published an interview of Willard Hurst by Hendrik Hartog. Michael Grossberg, as editor, introduced the interview as the first of “an occasional series of discussions with legal historians.” Over a decade has elapsed since that conversation. Willard Hurst was known both for his scholarship and his commitment to mentoring. Planning for the 4th Biennial Hurst Summer Institute at Madison in June 2007, I could think of no better way to conclude an Institute focused on nurturing legal historians at the beginning of their careers than with a conversation focused on a life in legal history.