Lucy E. Salyer

Federal Justice in California: The Court of Ogden Hoffman, 1851-1891@@@Practicing Law in Frontier California

For forty years Ogden Hoffman presided over the federal district court for the Northern District of California, disposing of more than nineteen thousand cases brought before him. Federal Justice in California: The Court of Ogden Hoffman, 1851-1891 considers a career remarkable for longevity and productivity and at the same time examines the operation of a federal trial court in nineteenth-century America - the cases adjudicated, their significance, and the courts impact upon the community. Solidly researched, Christian G. Fritzs book is unique in attending to the law on the level at which it was most often encountered by participants in legal actions. During his four decades on the bench, from the time of the California gold rush to the anti-Chinese movement of the 1880s, Hoffman dealt one-on-one with a cross-section of humanity: through his court came sea captains, seamen seeking their wages, wealthy steamship owners and distraught and injured passengers, and Chinese immigrants. Fritz shows him adjudicating land grant conflicts and bankruptcy cases and presiding over the admiralty, criminal, and common law and equity dockets. The author has examined thousands of Hoffmans cases to gain insight into how nineteenth-century federal trial courts were used, by whom, and with what effect. The successful use that a broad range of plaintiffs made of Hoffmans court requires a re-examination of theories suggesting that law of the period primarily developed and courts largely operated in ways that promoted commercial and entrepreneurial interest. Just as important, Fritzs sensitive analysis of an institution never loses sight of the proud life-long bachelor, native New Yorker, and scion of a distinguished family who always identified himself with his court. Christian G. Fritz is a professor of law at the University of New Mexico.

Land Without Ghosts: Chinese Impressions of America From the Mid-Nineteenth Century to the Present.

Americans have long been fascinated with European views of the United States. The many Chinese commentaries on America, however, have remained largely unavailable to the English reader. Land without Ghosts presents for the first time selections on America from Chinese writings over the last 150 years. Included are extracts from the travel diaries of nineteenth-century diplomats, a first-hand account of blacks in 1930s Alabama and of the young white Communists working to organize them.