Law in the United States: Cases and Commentaries, 3rd Edition

 

Law in the United States: Cases and Commentaries

3rd Edition

Charles F. Abernathy, Markus G. Puder

The third edition of Law in the United States introduces students to the unique American mix of common law, statutory materials, and constitutional law. Strongly emphasizing American legal methods and American legal history and culture, the book provides a rich array of teaching resources covering both public and private law.

The broader themes discussed in the eighteen chapters of this casebook include the nature and sources of American law, the division of government power and the protection of human rights under the U.S. Constitution, litigation in a federal framework, and the American enterprise system, with a focus on torts, contracts, corporations and eminent domain.

This book lends itself to being used for various target audiences. Over the years, it has proven a valuable learning resource for foreign-trained attorneys enrolled in American Master of Laws programs. Moreover, the range of subjects discussed in the book will assist students who may wish to sit for a state bar examination in a state with specific requirements for study of American legal methods. The book is also highly suitable for pre-law programs at the college level as well as law school seminars. Also, comparativists with an interest in American law may find this casebook a valuable resource in light of the rich commentaries it offers through expositions and notes.

PUBLICATION DATE: 05/03/2021 - ISBN: 9781647085520 - EXTENT: 890 PAGES

Revolution and Evolution in Private Law

Edited by: Sarah Worthington, Andrew Robertson, Graham Virgo

The development of private law across the common law world is typically portrayed as a series of incremental steps, each one delivered as a result of judges dealing with marginally different factual circumstances presented to them for determination. This is said to be the common law method. According to this process, change might be assumed to be gradual, almost imperceptible. If this were true, however, then even Darwinian-style evolution-death of the dinosaurs or development of flight-would seem unlikely in the law, and radical and revolutionary paradigms shifts perhaps impossible. And yet the history of the common law is to the contrary. The legal landscape is littered with quite remarkable revolutionary and evolutionary changes in the shape of the common law. The essays in this volume explore some of the highlights in this fascinating revolutionary and evolutionary development of the common law. The authors expose the nature of the changes undergone and their significance for the future direction of travel. They identify the circumstances and the contexts which might have provided an impetus for these significant changes. The essays range across all areas of private law, including contract, tort, unjust enrichment, and property. No area has been immune from development. That fact itself is unsurprising, but an extended examination of the particular circumstances and contexts which delivered some of private law's most important developments has its own special significance for what it might indicate about the shape, and the shaping, of private law regimes in the future. [Subject: Private Law, Contract Law, Tort Law, Equity & Trusts, Comparative Law, Property Law, Common Law]

ARTICLE: Postema on the Necessity of System in Common Law

Juris Diversitas is pleased to inform you about Professor Gerald J. Postema's new article:"Law's System: The Necessity of System in Common Law"

 Abstract:

T.E. Holland infamously described the common law “chaos with a full index,” and critics from Bentham to Peter Birks have criticized common law for its manifest absence of system, its disorderly collection of legal categories and miscellany of odd rules. Defenders of contemporary common law celebrate its resolute anti-theoretical stance and resistance to systematization. However, this characterization of common law, shared by defenders and critics alike, is greatly flawed. Common law is deeply and pervasively committed to system, although this commitment has not been recognized by modern positivist legal theory. Law of any jurisdiction, because of features essential to its distinctive mode of operating and because of the need to maintain its integrity, cannot ignore the demands of system. Moreover, distinctive modes of common-law reasoning presuppose and respond to the demands of system, while at the same time retaining a salutary pragmatism and wariness of global theorizing.