Law of the United States
The law of the
of general and permanent federal statutory law.Federal law and treaties, so long as they are in accordance with the Constitution, preempt conflicting state and territorial laws in the 50
At both the federal and state levels, with the exception of the
General overview
Sources of law
In the United States, the law is derived from five sources:
Constitutionality
Where Congress enacts a statute that conflicts with the Constitution, state or federal courts may rule that law to be
Notably, a statute does not automatically disappear merely because it has been found unconstitutional; it may, however, be deleted by a subsequent statute. Many federal and state statutes have remained on the books for decades after they were ruled to be unconstitutional. However, under the principle of
American common law
The United States and most Commonwealth countries are heirs to the common law legal tradition of English law.[22] Certain practices traditionally allowed under English common law were expressly outlawed by the Constitution, such as bills of attainder[23] and general search warrants.[24]
As common law courts, U.S. courts have inherited the principle of stare decisis.[25] American judges, like common law judges elsewhere, not only apply the law, they also make the law, to the extent that their decisions in the cases before them become precedent for decisions in future cases.[26]
The actual substance of English law was formally "received" into the United States in several ways. First, all U.S. states except Louisiana have enacted "
Second, a small number of important British statutes in effect at the time of the Revolution have been independently reenacted by U.S. states. Two examples are the Statute of Frauds (still widely known in the U.S. by that name) and the Statute of 13 Elizabeth (the ancestor of the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act). Such English statutes are still regularly cited in contemporary American cases interpreting their modern American descendants.[30]
Despite the presence of reception statutes, much of contemporary American common law has diverged significantly from English common law.[31] Although the courts of the various Commonwealth nations are often influenced by each other's rulings, American courts rarely follow post-Revolution precedents from England or the British Commonwealth.
Early on, American courts, even after the Revolution, often did cite contemporary English cases, because appellate decisions from many American courts were not regularly reported until the mid-19th century. Lawyers and judges used English legal materials to fill the gap.
Today, in the words of Stanford law professor Lawrence M. Friedman: "American cases rarely cite foreign materials. Courts occasionally cite a British classic or two, a famous old case, or a nod to Blackstone; but current British law almost never gets any mention."[37] Foreign law has never been cited as binding precedent, but as a reflection of the shared values of Anglo-American civilization or even Western civilization in general.[38]
Levels of law
Federal law
Federal law originates with the Constitution, which gives Congress the power to enact
During the 18th and 19th centuries, federal law traditionally focused on areas where there was an express grant of power to the federal government in the federal Constitution, like the
Statutes
After the president signs a bill into law (or Congress enacts it over the president's veto), it is delivered to the
Public laws are incorporated into the United States Code, which is a codification of all general and permanent laws of the United States. The main edition is published every six years by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the House of Representatives, and cumulative supplements are published annually.[42] The U.S. Code is arranged by subject matter, and it shows the present status of laws (with amendments already incorporated in the text) that have been amended on one or more occasions.
Regulations
Congress often enacts statutes that grant broad
Regulations are adopted pursuant to the
Besides regulations formally promulgated under the APA, federal agencies also frequently promulgate an enormous amount of forms, manuals, policy statements, letters, and rulings. These documents may be considered by a court as persuasive authority as to how a particular statute or regulation may be interpreted (known as Skidmore deference), but are not entitled to Chevron deference.
Common law, case law, and precedent
Unlike the situation with the states, there is no plenary reception statute at the federal level that continued the common law and thereby granted federal courts the power to formulate
The difficult question is whether federal judicial power extends to formulating
As federal judge Alex Kozinski has pointed out, binding precedent as we know it today simply did not exist at the time the Constitution was framed.[45] Judicial decisions were not consistently, accurately, and faithfully reported on both sides of the Atlantic (reporters often simply rewrote or failed to publish decisions which they disliked), and the United Kingdom lacked a coherent court hierarchy prior to the end of the 19th century.[45] Furthermore, English judges in the eighteenth century subscribed to now-obsolete natural law theories of law, by which law was believed to have an existence independent of what individual judges said. Judges saw themselves as merely declaring the law which had always theoretically existed, and not as making the law.[45] Therefore, a judge could reject another judge's opinion as simply an incorrect statement of the law, in the way that scientists regularly reject each other's conclusions as incorrect statements of the laws of science.[45]
In turn, according to Kozinski's analysis, the contemporary rule of binding precedent became possible in the U.S. in the nineteenth century only after the creation of a clear court hierarchy (under the
Here is a typical exposition of how public policy supports the rule of binding precedent in a 2008
Justice Brandeis once observed that "in most matters it is more important that the applicable rule of law be settled than that it be settled right." Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co. [...] To overturn a decision settling one such matter simply because we might believe that decision is no longer "right" would inevitably reflect a willingness to reconsider others. And that willingness could itself threaten to substitute disruption, confusion, and uncertainty for necessary legal stability. We have not found here any factors that might overcome these considerations.[50]
It is now sometimes possible, over time, for a line of precedents to drift from the express language of any underlying statutory or constitutional texts until the courts' decisions establish doctrines that were not considered by the texts' drafters. This trend has been strongly evident in federal substantive due process[51] and Commerce Clause decisions.[52] Originalists and political conservatives, such as Associate Justice Antonin Scalia have criticized this trend as anti-democratic.[53][54][55][56]
Under the doctrine of Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins (1938), there is no general federal common law. Although federal courts can create federal common law in the form of case law, such law must be linked one way or another to the interpretation of a particular federal constitutional provision, statute, or regulation (which was either enacted as part of the Constitution or pursuant to constitutional authority). Federal courts lack the plenary power possessed by state courts to simply make up law, which the latter are able to do in the absence of constitutional or statutory provisions replacing the common law. Only in a few narrow limited areas, like maritime law,[57] has the Constitution expressly authorized the continuation of English common law at the federal level (meaning that in those areas federal courts can continue to make law as they see fit, subject to the limitations of stare decisis).
The other major implication of the Erie doctrine is that federal courts cannot dictate the content of state law when there is no federal issue (and thus no federal supremacy issue) in a case.[58] When hearing claims under state law pursuant to diversity jurisdiction, federal trial courts must apply the statutory and decisional law of the state in which they sit, as if they were a court of that state,[59] even if they believe that the relevant state law is irrational or just bad public policy.[60]
Under Erie, such federal deference to state law applies only in one direction: state courts are not bound by federal interpretations of state law.[61] Similarly, state courts are also not bound by most federal interpretations of federal law. In the vast majority of state courts, interpretations of federal law from federal courts of appeals and district courts can be cited as persuasive authority, but state courts are not bound by those interpretations.[62] The U.S. Supreme Court has never squarely addressed the issue, but has signaled in dicta that it sides with this rule.[62][63] Therefore, in those states, there is only one federal court that binds all state courts as to the interpretation of federal law and the federal Constitution: the U.S. Supreme Court itself.[62]
State and territory law
The fifty American states are separate
Most cases are litigated in state courts and involve claims and defenses under state laws.[67][68] In a 2018 report, the National Center for State Courts' Court Statistics Project found that state trial courts received 83.8 million newly filed cases in 2018, which consisted of 44.4 million traffic cases, 17.0 million criminal cases, 16.4 million civil cases, 4.7 million domestic relations cases, and 1.2 million juvenile cases.[69] In 2018, state appellate courts received 234,000 new cases.[69] By way of comparison, all federal district courts in 2016 together received only about 274,552 new civil cases, 79,787 new criminal cases, and 833,515 bankruptcy cases, while federal appellate courts received 53,649 new cases.[70]
State legal systems
- Law of Alabama
- Law of Alaska
- Law of Arizona
- Law of Arkansas
- Law of California
- Law of Colorado
- Law of Connecticut
- Law of Delaware
- Law of Florida
- Law of Georgia
- Law of Hawaii
- Law of Idaho
- Law of Illinois
- Law of Indiana
- Law of Iowa
- Law of Kansas
- Law of Kentucky
- Law of Louisiana
- Law of Maine
- Law of Maryland
- Law of Massachusetts
- Law of Michigan
- Law of Minnesota
- Law of Mississippi
- Law of Missouri
- Law of Montana
- Law of Nebraska
- Law of Nevada
- Law of New Hampshire
- Law of New Jersey
- Law of New Mexico
- Law of New York
- Law of North Carolina
- Law of North Dakota
- Law of Ohio
- Law of Oklahoma
- Law of Oregon
- Law of Pennsylvania
- Law of Rhode Island
- Law of South Carolina
- Law of South Dakota
- Law of Tennessee
- Law of Texas
- Law of Utah
- Law of Vermont
- Law of Virginia
- Law of Washington
- Law of West Virginia
- Law of Wisconsin
- Law of Wyoming
Territorial legal systems
Local law
States have delegated lawmaking powers to thousands of
It is common for residents of major
Legal subjects
American lawyers draw a fundamental distinction between procedural law (which controls the procedure by which legal rights and duties are vindicated)[73] and substantive law (the actual substance of law, which is usually expressed in the form of various legal rights and duties).[74][75]
Criminal law and procedure
Criminal law involves the
All states have somewhat similar laws in regard to "higher crimes" (or
Some states distinguish between two levels: felonies and
On average, only three percent of criminal cases are resolved by jury trial; 97 percent are terminated either by plea bargaining or dismissal of the charges.[77]
For public welfare offenses where the state is punishing merely risky (as opposed to injurious) behavior, there is significant diversity across the various states. For example, punishments for drunk driving varied greatly prior to 1990. State laws dealing with drug crimes still vary widely, with some states treating possession of small amounts of drugs as a misdemeanor offense or as a medical issue and others categorizing the same offense as a serious felony.
The law of
Civil procedure
The law of
Thirty-five states have adopted rules of civil procedure modeled after the FRCP (including rule numbers). However, in doing so, they had to make some modifications to account for the fact that state courts have broad general jurisdiction while federal courts have relatively limited jurisdiction.
New York, Illinois, and California are the most significant states that have not adopted the FRCP. Furthermore, all three states continue to maintain most of their civil procedure laws in the form of codified statutes enacted by the state legislature, as opposed to court rules promulgated by the state supreme court, on the ground that the latter are undemocratic. But certain key portions of their civil procedure laws have been modified by their legislatures to bring them closer to federal civil procedure.[79]
Generally, American civil procedure has several notable features, including extensive pretrial
Contract law
Parties are permitted to agree to arbitrate disputes arising from their contracts. Under the Federal Arbitration Act (which has been interpreted to cover all contracts arising under federal or state law), arbitration clauses are generally enforceable unless the party resisting arbitration can show unconscionability or fraud or something else which undermines the entire contract.
Tort law
Tort law generally covers any civil action between private parties arising from wrongful acts which amount to a breach of general obligations imposed by law and not by contract. This broad family of civil wrongs involves interference "with person, property, reputation, or commercial or social advantage."[81]
Tort law covers the entire imaginable spectrum of wrongs which humans can inflict upon each other, and partially overlaps with wrongs also punishable by criminal law. It is primarily a matter of state law and is usually developed through case law from state appellate courts; it is rarely a matter of federal law, and tort-related statutes are focused on discrete issues like authorizing wrongful death claims (which did not exist at common law).[82] Although the American Law Institute has attempted to standardize tort law through the development of several versions of the Restatement of Torts, many states have chosen to adopt only certain sections of the Restatements and to reject others. Thus, because of its immense size and diversity, American tort law cannot be easily summarized.
For example, a few jurisdictions allow actions for negligent infliction of emotional distress even in the absence of physical injury to the plaintiff, but most do not. For any particular tort, states differ on the causes of action, types and scope of remedies, statutes of limitations, and the amount of specificity with which one must plead the cause. With practically any aspect of tort law, there is a "majority rule" adhered to by most states, and one or more "minority rules."
Notably, the most broadly influential innovation of 20th-century American tort law was the rule of
By the 1990s, the avalanche of American cases resulting from Greenman and Section 402A had become so complicated that another restatement was needed, which occurred with the 1997 publication of the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability.[88]
Property law
Historically, American property law has been heavily influenced by English land law,[89] and is therefore concerned with real property first and personal property second.[90] It is also primarily a matter of state law, and the level of interstate diversity in the law of property is much more substantial than in contract and tort.[90] Efforts by both the American Law Institute[91] and the Uniform Law Commission to reduce such interstate diversity were spectacular failures.[92][93][94]
The majority of states use a title recording system (coupled with privately provided title insurance) to manage title to real property, although title registration (Torrens title) is also allowed in a small minority of states.[95] Title to personal property is usually not registered, with the notable exceptions of motor vehicles (through a state department of motor vehicles or equivalent), bicycles (in certain cities and counties), and some types of firearms (in certain states).[96]
Family law
In the United States, family law governs relationships between adults, and relationships between parents and their children.[97] As a discrete area of law worthy of its own specialists and law professors, American family law is relatively young in comparison to European family law; it did not take flight until the no-fault divorce revolution of the 1960s.[98] Before the 1950s, widespread religious, legal, and social prohibitions against divorce in the United States meant that divorces were rare, were often seen as fact-driven matters (meaning that they were perceived as turning on each case's facts and not broadly generalizable legal principles), and rarely went up on appeal.[99] The rise of no-fault divorce caused divorce litigation to shift away from the question of who was at fault for the collapse of the marital relationship and to focus instead on issues such as division of property, spousal support, and child support.[100]
Family cases are traditionally a matter of state law and are virtually always heard only in state courts.[101][102] Certain kinds of contract, tort, and property civil actions involving state law issues can be heard in federal courts under diversity jurisdiction, but federal courts decline to hear family cases under the "domestic relations exception" to diversity jurisdiction.[101]
Although family cases are heard in state courts, there has been a trend towards federalization of certain specific issues in family law. State courts and the lawyers who practice before them must be aware of federal income tax and bankruptcy implications of a divorce judgment, federal constitutional rights to abortion and paternity, and federal statutes governing interstate child custody disputes and interstate child support enforcement.[102]
See also
- Admission to the bar in the United States
- Attorneys in the United States
- Black's Law Dictionary
- Courts of the United States
- Legal education in the United States
- Legal systems of the world
- Privacy laws of the United States
Lists
- Legal research in the United States
- List of sources of law in the United States
- List of Uniform Acts (United States)—intended for state-level legislation
- List of United States federal legislation
- List of United States Supreme Court cases
References
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- ^ Ex parte Virginia, 100 U.S. 339 (1880).
- ^ Head Money Cases, 112 U.S. 580 (1884).
- ^ Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 134 (1944).
- ^ Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1 (1958).
- ^ William Burnham, Introduction to the Law and Legal System of the United States, 4th ed. (St. Paul, MN: Thomson West, 2006), 41.
- ^ Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U.S. 452 (1991).
- ^ Kowalski, Tonya (2009). "The Forgotten Sovereigns". Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 36 (4): 765–826.
- ^ United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995).
- ^ Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74 (1980).
- ^ California v. Ramos, 463 U.S. 992 (1983).
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- ISBN 9780198764052. Retrieved August 11, 2020.
- ISBN 9780190070915. Retrieved August 11, 2020. Professor Friedman points out that English law itself was never completely uniform across Englandprior to the 20th century. The result was that the colonists recreated the legal diversity of English law in the American colonies.
- ISBN 9780195102475. Retrieved August 11, 2020.
- ^ Paul Bergman and Sara J. Berman-Barrett, Represent Yourself in Court: How to Prepare & Try a Winning Case, 6th ed. (Berkeley: Nolo, 2008), 481.
- ^ See Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (Cranch 1) 137 (1803).
- ^ James B. Beam Distilling Co. v. Georgia, 501 U.S. 529 (1991)
- ^ See Casarotto v. Lombardi, 886 P.2d 931, 940 (Mont. 1994) (Trieweiler, J., specially concurring), vacated and remanded by 515 U.S. 1129 (1995), reaff'd and reinstated by 901 P.2d 596 (Mont. 1995), rev'd sub nom. Doctor's Assocs., Inc. v. Casarotto, 517 U.S. 681 (1996).
- ^ Cavazos v. Smith, 565 U.S. 1 (2011) (per curiam).
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- ^ U.S. Const., Art. 1, §§ 9 and 10.
- ^ U.S. Const., Amend. IV.
- ^ John C. Dernbach and Cathleen S. Wharton, A Practical Guide to Legal Writing & Legal Method, 2nd ed. (Buffalo: William S. Hein Publishing, 1994), 34–36.
- ISBN 9780691174044.
- ^ Miles O. Price & Harry Bitner, Effective Legal Research: A Practical Manual of Law Books and Their Use, 3rd ed. (Buffalo: William Hein & Co., 1969), 272.
- ^ a b Ibid.
- ^ See, e.g., Gomez v. Superior Court, 35 Cal. 4th 1125, 29 Cal. Rptr. 3d 352, 113 P.3d 41 (2005) (citing Lovett v. Hobbs, 89 Eng. Rep. 836 (1680)). The Gomez court relied on a line of cases originating with Lovett in order to hold that Disneyland was a common carrier.
- ^ See, e.g., Phillippe v. Shapell Industries, 43 Cal. 3d 1247, 241 Cal. Rptr. 22, 743 P.2d 1279 (1987) (citing original Statute of Frauds from England) and Meija v. Reed, 31 Cal.4th 657, 3 Cal. Rptr. 3d 390, 74 P.3d 166 (2003) (citing Statute of 13 Elizabeth).
- ^ Burnham, 43–44.
- ISBN 9780190070915. Retrieved August 11, 2020.
- Territory of Michiganchanged from a complete reliance on English sources of law to an increasing reliance on citations to American sources.
- ISBN 9780190070915. Retrieved August 11, 2020.
- ^ People v. Kelly, 40 Cal.4th 106, 51 Cal. Rptr. 3d 98, 146 P.3d 547 (2006).
- ^ Willis, E.B.; Stockton, P.K. (1881). Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of California, Convened at the City of Sacramento, Saturday, September 28, 1878, Vol. III. Sacramento: State of California. p. 1455.
- ISBN 9780300102994. Retrieved August 12, 2020.
- Dudgeon v. United Kingdom, 45 Eur. Ct. H. R. (1981), as indicative of the shared values of Western civilization.
- United States Government Printing Office. March 9, 2017.
- ISBN 9781285402604.
- ISBN 9781285402604.
- ^ "About the US Code". US Government Publishing Office.
- ISBN 9781590314838.
- ISBN 9780198764052. Retrieved August 11, 2020.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Hart v. Massanari, 266 F.3d 1155 (9th Cir. 2001), citing Anastasoff v. United States, 223 F.3d 898, vacated as moot on [rehearing] en banc, 235 F.3d 1054 (8th Cir. 2000).
- ^ Michael J. Gerhardt, The Power of Precedent (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 59.
- ^ Daniel A. Farber and Suzanna Sherry, Judgment Calls: Principle and Politics in Constitutional Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 70–71.
- ^ Frederick Schauer, Precedent, 39 Stan. L. Rev. 571, 595–602 (1987).
- ISBN 978-94-007-7950-1. Available via SpringerLink.
- ^ John R. Sand Gravel Co. v. United States, 552 U.S. 130, 139 (2008).
- ^ Cass R. Sunstein, Designing Democracy: What Constitutions Do (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 80.
- ^ Raoul Berger, "Judicial Manipulation of the Commerce Clause", 74 Tex. L. Rev. 695 (Mar. 1996).
- ^ National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. ___ (2012) (Thomas, J. dissenting)
- ^ Dickerson v. United States, 530 U.S. 428 (2000) (Scalia, J., dissenting).
- ^ United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515 (1996) (Scalia, J., dissenting)
- ^ Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992) (Scalia, J., dissenting)
- ^ Romero v. International Terminal Operating Co., 358 U.S. 354, 360–361 (1959).
- ^ Klaxon Co. v. Stentor Elec. Mfg. Co., Inc., 313 U.S. 487 (1941).
- ISBN 9780198764052. Retrieved August 11, 2020.
- ^ Trident Center v. Connecticut Gen. Life Ins. Co., 847 F.2d 564 (9th Cir. 1988). In this opinion, federal judge Alex Kozinski attacked a 1968 Supreme Court of California opinion at length before conceding that under Erie, he had no choice but to apply the state court's reasoning despite his strong dislike of it.
- ^ Stone Street Capital, LLC v. California State Lottery Com., 165 Cal. App. 4th 109, 123 fn. 11 (2008).
- ^ a b c Frost, Amanda (2015). "Inferiority Complex: Should State Courts Follow Lower Federal Court Precedent on the Meaning of Federal Law?" (PDF). Vanderbilt Law Review. 68 (1): 53–103.
- ^ Johnson v. Williams, 568 U.S. 289 (2013).
- ^ Heath v. Alabama, 474 U.S. 82 (1985). In Heath, the U.S. Supreme Court explained that "the Court has uniformly held that the States are separate sovereigns with respect to the Federal Government because each State's power to prosecute is derived from its own 'inherent sovereignty,' not from the Federal Government .... The States are no less sovereign with respect to each other than they are with respect to the Federal Government. Their powers to undertake criminal prosecutions derive from separate and independent sources of power and authority originally belonging to them before admission to the Union and preserved to them by the Tenth Amendment."
- ^ See 28 U.S.C. § 1257.
- ISBN 0897749634.
- ^ Sean O. Hogan, The Judicial Branch of State Government: People, Process, and Politics, (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2006), xiv.
- ^ Alan B. Morrison, "Courts", in Fundamentals of American Law, ed. Alan B. Morrison, 57–60 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 60.
- ^ a b National Center for State Courts. "State Court Caseload Digest, 2018 Data" (PDF). Court Statistics Project. National Center for State Courts. Retrieved March 18, 2023.
- ^ Office of Judges Programs, Statistics Division, Judicial Caseload Indicators (Washington: Administrative Office of the United States Courts, 2016).
- ^ See, e.g., Burton v. Municipal Court, 68 Cal. 2d 684 (1968) (invalidating Los Angeles city ordinance regulating motion picture theatres as an unconstitutional violation of freedom of speech as protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution).
- ^ Osborne M. Reynolds, Jr., Local Government Law, 3rd ed. (St. Paul: West, 2009), 33.
- ISBN 9781133707981. Retrieved November 26, 2020.
- ISBN 9781133707981. Retrieved November 26, 2020.
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- ^ ISBN 9781851097517. Retrieved October 5, 2020.
- ISBN 9781851097517. Retrieved October 5, 2020.
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- ^ For example, Section 437c of the California Code of Civil Procedure was amended by the state legislature several times in the 1990s to bring California's summary judgment standard in line with Rule 56 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. See Aguilar v. Atlantic Richfield Co., 25 Cal. 4th 826, 849 (2001).
- ISBN 9780199733101. Retrieved November 17, 2020.
- ISBN 9780199733101. Retrieved November 17, 2020.
- ISBN 9780199733101. Retrieved November 17, 2020.
- ^ Mark A. Kinzie & Christine F. Hart, Product Liability Litigation (Clifton Park, NY: Thomson Delmar Learning, 2002), 100–101. See also Greenman v. Yuba Power Products, Inc., 59 Cal. 2d 57 (1963).
- ^ Kinzie & Hart, 101.
- ^ Norbert Reich, Understanding EU Law: Objectives, Principles and Methods of Community Law (Antwerp: Intersentia, 2005), 337.
- ^ Ellen E. Beerworth, "Australia", 51–74, in International Product Liability, vol. 1, ed. Christian Campbell (Salzburg: Yorkhill Law Publishing, 2006), 52.
- ^ Patricia L. Maclachlan, Consumer Politics in Postwar Japan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 226.
- ^ "ALI Restatement of the Law Third, Torts: Products Liability". Ali.org. Archived from the original on May 31, 2013. Retrieved September 23, 2013.
- ISBN 9780199733101. Retrieved November 17, 2020.
- ^ ISBN 9780199733101. Retrieved November 17, 2020.
- ^ Merrill, Thomas W.; Smith, Henry E. (January 2014). "Why Restate the Bundle?: The Disintegration of the Restatement of Property". Brooklyn Law Review. 79 (2): 681–708.
- ^ Marion W. Benfield, Jr., Wasted Days and Wasted Nights: Why the Land Acts Failed, 20 Nova L. Rev. 1037, 1037–41 (1996).
- ^ Ronald Benton Brown, Whatever Happened to the Uniform Land Transactions Act? 20 Nova L. Rev. 1017 (1996);
- ^ Peter B. Maggs, The Uniform Simplification of Land Transfers Act and the Politics and Economics of Law Reform, 20 Nova L. Rev. 1091, 1091–92 (1996).
- ISBN 9780199733101. Retrieved November 17, 2020.
- ISBN 9781305177307.
- ISBN 9780199759224. Retrieved November 23, 2020.
- ISBN 9780199759224. Retrieved November 23, 2020.
- ISBN 9780199759224. Retrieved November 23, 2020.
- ISBN 9780199759224. Retrieved November 23, 2020.
- ^ ISBN 9789041128720.
- ^ ISBN 9781337917537.
Further reading
- Friedman, Lawrence M. American Law (1984)
- Hadden, Sally F. and Brophy, Alfred L. (eds.), A Companion to American Legal History. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.
- Hall, Kermit L. et al. eds. The Oxford Companion to American Law (2002) excerpt and text search
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Legal history
- Edwards, Laura F. A Legal History of the Civil War and Reconstruction: A Nation of Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2015) 212 pp.
- Friedman, Lawrence M. A History of American Law (3rd ed. 2005) 640 pp
- Friedman, Lawrence M. American Law in the Twentieth Century (2002)
- Hall, Kermit L. The Magic Mirror: Law in American History (1989)
- Hall, Kermit L. et al. American Legal History: Cases and Materials (2010); 752 pages
- Horwitz, Morton J. The transformation of American law: 1780–1860 (1977)
- Hovenkamp, Herbert The Opening of American Law: Neoclassical Legal Thought, 1870–1970 (2015)
- Horwitz, Morton J. The transformation of American law, 1870–1960: the crisis of legal orthodoxy (1994)
- Howe, Mark de Wolfe, ed. Readings in American Legal History (2001) 540pp
- Johnson, Herbert A. American legal and constitutional history: cases and materials (2001) 733 pp
- Rabban, David M. (2003). "The Historiography of Late Nineteenth-Century American Legal History". Theoretical Inquiries in Law. 4 (2): Article 5. S2CID 56143958.
- Schwartz, Bernard. The Law in America. (Evolution of American legal institutions since 1790). (1974).
Colonial
- Gerber, Scott D. (2011). "Bringing Ideas Back In—A Brief Historiography of American Colonial Law". American Journal of Legal History. 51 (2): 359–374. SSRN 1815230.
- Hoffer, Peter (1998). Law and People in Colonial America (Rev. ed.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-5822-4.
Lawyers
- Abel, Richard L. American Lawyers (1991)
- Chroust, Anton-Hermann. The Rise of the legal profession in America (2 vol 1965), to 1860
- Drachman, Virginia G. Sisters in Law: Women Lawyers in Modern American History (2001)
- Nizer, Louis. My Life in Court. (1978) Popular description of a lawyer's practice
- Vile, John R. Great American lawyers: an encyclopedia (2001)
- Vile, John R. Great American judges: an encyclopedia (2003)
- Wortman, Marlene Stein. Women in American Law: From colonial times to the New Deal (1985)
Philosophy of law
- Cardozo, Benjamin N., ed. An Introduction to Law. (1957). (Essays by eight distinguished American judges)
- Hart, H.L.A. The Concept of Law. (1961). (Introductory text on the nature of law)
- Llewellyn, Karl N. "The Bramble Bush", in Karl N. Llewellyn on Legal Realism. (1986). (Introductory text on the nature of law)
- Pound, Roscoe. Social Control Through Law. (Nature of law and its role in society). (1942)
External links
- Official U.S. Government page on Laws and Legal Issues
- Official U.S. Government page for U.S. federal courts
- Texts of U.S. federal laws and U.S. state laws
- U.S. Code collection at Cornell University's Legal Information Institute