Charles W. McCurdy

American Law and the Marketing Structure of the Large Corporation, 1875–1890

This paper employs the techniques of legal history to explore the relationship between the rise of big business and the size of the American market. It emphasizes law as a determinant of market size, and it analyzes judicial construction of the Constitutions commerce clause over time to delineate the role of integrated corporations in generating legal change. Specifically, the paper suggests that if the American market is defined as a free-trade unit, enlargement of the market was a result of, rather than a prerequisite for, the post-Civil War revolution in business organization.

Troubled beginnings of the modern state, 1888-1910

Part I. The Legacy of Negative Examples: 1. Legitimacy and history 2. The identity of the institution Part II. Class Conflict and the Supreme Court: 3. Debs and the maintenance of public order 4. Pollock - the redistributive function denied Part III. The Response to Progressivism: 5. The Antitrust campaign 6. Labor legislation and the theory of Lochner 7. Rate regulation: the assault on Munn v. Illinois Part IV. The Concept of the Nation: 8. The American empire? 9. Federalism and liberty Part V. Liberty Dishonored: 10. The Chinese cases: citizenship and the claims of procedure 11. The early free speech cases 12. Plessy, alas 13. The end of a tradition?