Full E-book Inventing American Exceptionalism: The Origins of American Adversarial Legal

https://goodideas22.blogspot.com/?book=0300222254
A highly engaging account of the developments?not only legal, but also socioeconomic, political, and cultural?that gave rise to Americans? distinctively lawyer-driven legal culture When Americans imagine their legal system, it is the adversarial trial?dominated by dueling larger-than-life lawyers undertaking grand public performances?that 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 sources?and 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.