Rugged Justice: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the American West, 1891-1941

Rugged Justice: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the American West, 1891–1941 by David C. Frederick offers the first full history of the nation’s largest regional appellate court during its formative half-century, showing how law and landscape shaped one another across a vast jurisdiction stretching from Alaska to the Mojave and, later, to the Pacific islands. Opening with the Ninth Circuit’s modest 1891 debut in a “dismal” San Francisco courtroom, Frederick traces how a court born to...