Belated Feudalism: Labor, the Law, and Liberal Development in the United States

Contrary to the idea that the United States was liberal from its inception, Orren argues that both capitalism and constitutionalism proceeded upon a remnant of ancient feudalism. This was the common law of master and servant, embedded in the judiciary, cutting off the fundamental area of labor governance from democratic politics. The fully legislative polity that defines the modern liberal state was brought on through the industrial actions of trade unions in the late nineteenth and early t...