Law as Culture and Culture as Law

For four decades, John Phillip Reid has been one of the most productive and challenging practitioners of American legal and constitutional history. Writing on subjects as diverse as the law of the Cherokee, legal culture on the Overland trail, and the legal and constitutional history of the American Revolution, Reid has illuminated the many ways in which law has been a central cultural value. Law as Culture and Culture as Law not only honors Professor Reid's decades of scholarship and teaching--it presents a spectrum of historical inquiries developing and engaging Reid's insights and methodological approaches to legal and constitutional history. The essays gathered in this volume span nearly three centuries and two continents, ranging from the agonizing struggles over law, religion, and governance in late seventeenth-century Ireland to the legal and constitutional regimes of governmental regulation in twentieth-century New York. Law as Culture and Culture as Law is a tribute to John Philip Reid and the best evidence of his profound influence on the study and writing of legal history.