Inventing American Exceptionalism: The Origins of American Adversarial Legal Culture, 1800-1877 (Yale Law Library Series in Legal History and Reference)

A highly engaging account of the developmentsnot only legal but also socioeconomic political and culturalthat gave rise to Americans distinctively lawyer-driven legal culture When Americans imagine their legal system it is the adversarial trialdominated by dueling larger-than-life lawyers undertaking grand public performancesthat 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 sourcesand 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.