Dominant Themes in American Legal History

Some of the royal court's important decisions carry been overly influenced by wakeless doctrines which have not stood the raise of time. Overall, however, the American legal system has proved to be signally resilient and in tune with the needs of the times.

During the first twain and half post-Civil War decades, most of the United States (other than the South) underwent tremendous scotch growth and social change and endured severe boom and discover cycles during which social tensions among the classes intensified. The American legal system largely curing to accommodate the interests of the most queenful economic interests. In a long series of cases, the Supreme Court used the occupation, overdue Process (5th and 14th Amendments) and Contract Clauses of the Constitution to protect mercenary interests a scorest state interference.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field reign judicial thinking during the first 20 years afterward the end of the Civil War. He saw the courts as a neutral force, whose principal function was to level the economic playacting field so that the toffee-nosed and man sectors could cooperate in the public interest. He sought, said McCurdy (1975), through his 'public-use' doctrine to inspect " primitive limitations on the exercise of the state's inherent powers" (255). Some constitutional scholars, such as Thomas Cooley (1868), constructed a theory of natural law which preached non-i

Schechter Corp. v. United States. 495 U.S. 519-551 (1934).

ntervention by the courts into private office rights which he held to be sacrosanct (341). Law professor Christopher Langdell (1880) used the case method of instruction to enable students to gain "mastery . . . of certain [immutable and rational] principles and doctrines" (716). Roscoe stupefy later decried this type of legal philosophy as mechanical jurisprudence, unresponsive to societal needs. Pound (1931) said: "Law is more than a body of devices for blood line purposes, just as it is more than a body of rules for the advocate of courts" (npn).

From the standpoint of blacks, women, workers, farmers and minorities generally, the Court's decisions were disappointing. In Hall v.

DeCuir (1877), the Court used the Commerce Clause to strike down a Louisiana polity which had outlawed racial segregation in public transportation. In the Civil Rights cases, (1883), the Court construed the 14th Amendment narrowly to limit the power of Congress to prevent racial discrimination in public accommodations by the states. These decisions, and later ones, such as Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which involved a Louisiana statute which segregated the races on trains and which was upheld by the Court on states rights grounds so long as the conk out facilities were roughly equal, reflected the dominant thinking of that era and not tho in the South.

Holmes, Oliver W. The Common Law (1881). In Law and Jurisprudence, eds. (nfn)Presser & (nfn)Zainalden, 720-729. 3d Ed. St. Paul: West Publishing, 1995.

Gitlow v. New York (1925). In American wakeless History, eds. (nfn)Hall & (nfn)Weicek, 418. 2d Ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996.

In practice, rulings of the high court were often prosaic and took many twists and turns. Despite its predilection toward the protection of private property and liberty of contract, the Court permitted the states a fair degree of analogue in the exercise of their police powers. In Munn v. Il
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