Litigation Nation: A Cultural History of Lawsuits in America

In this engaging and comprehensive survey of American history via the courtroom, legal historian Hoffer (Uncivil Warriors: The Lawyers’ Civil War) persuasively argues that intense litigation signals a period of social upheaval, “a temporary disparity between new and old social norms.” Each chapter focuses on a cluster of case studies that illuminate a contested “phase change” in American identity and culture. For example, he argues, real estate title cases in the colonial U.S. gave voice to mutual frustrations between yeoman farmers and a new commercial elite. Before the Civil War, fraud suits connected to slave trading illuminated increasing Southern anxiety about the future of the institution; cases in the North regarding back pay and the legality of craft unions bespoke concerns about the dignity of the individual in industrial society. The second half of the book posits that litigation helped extend the rights of the individual, as in stockholder suits against the fraudulent machinations of Gilded Age railroad financiers and consumer class action torts against corporate wrongdoing. Chapters regarding changes in divorce and the landmark civil rights lawsuits in the mid-20th century illuminate shifting paradigms in gender and race relations, respectively. This eloquent, well-organized book will particularly delight academic readers new to legal history and will give those in the legal field a greater sense of their profession’s role in shaping America’s culture and character. (Sept.)