Remaking Custom: Law and Identity in the Early American Republic

History has largely forgotten the writings, both public and private, of early nineteenth-century America’s legal scholars. However, Ellen Holmes Pearson argues that the observers from this era had a unique perspective on the young nation and the directions in which its legal culture might go.

Remaking Custom draws on the law lectures, treatises, speeches, and papers of the early republic’s legal scholars to examine the critical role that they played in the formation of American identities. A...