Gerard W. Gawalt

The New High Priests: Lawyers in Post-Civil War America

Gerard W. Gawalt has collected essays that explore the critical period in the development of the legal profession from 1865 to 1900, when law replaced religion as the controlling element in American society and lawyers clearly established themselves as the formulators, advocates, and arbiters of the law. The authors of these essays explore the extent of the legal professions involvement in the growth of industrial America, focusing on the state of the profession in various geographic regions and on the professions institutions and plans for education, regulation, reform, and practice in the period after the Civil War. They address the central question of how the nature and structure of the legal profession was molded by the growth of urban-industrial society and argue that the profession not only adapted, but pioneered and adopted many of the aspects of the new industrialism.

Reason Over Precedents: Origins of American Legal Thought

American Institutional Legal Education and the Instillment of a Dynamic Conception of Law, 1779-1829 St. George Tucker and the Influence of Blackstones Commentaries on American Legal Education Analytical Law Treatises and the Advent of American Legal Methodology The Redaction of a Modified Doctrine of Stare Decisis into American Legal Practice: 1782-1830 The Effect of a Uniquely American Legal Thought on the Americanization of Law Appendixes: St. George Tuckers Reading List for Law Students at the College of William and Mary Proprietary Law Schools Founded Prior to 1830 with Biographical Information About Instructors and Graduates Statistical Data and Graphs Indicating the Impact of Proprietary Law Schools on the American Bar and Judiciary List of American Analytical Law Treatises Published Between 1794 and 1826 Table of Cases Bibliography Index