Description: "William Wiecek's The Lost World of Classical Legal Thought is a remarkable achievement. It has an extraordinary sweep, synthesizing with admirable clarity a transformation of enormous scope and importance. The book can serve extremely well as an introduction to the legal history of the period. Scholars who toil in these fields will find in the book a well-balanced yet distinctive point of view. For them it will also be a consistently useful resource because of Wiecek's wide-ranging use and discussion of primary and secondary sources, capped by a wonderful bibliographical essay."--Richard Friedman, Oxford University"We have needed a rigorously researched, perceptively analyzed, and comprehensively clear synthesis of this core topic for a very long time. Eureka!"--Harold M. Hyman, Rice University"In this thorough and deftly written account of classical legal thought and its role in privileging powerful economic interests and social elites, Professor Wiecek presents an important, forceful challenge to revisionists who have stressed its libertarian and egalitarian elements."--Michael Les Benedict, Ohio State University"William Wiecek's Lost World of Classical Thought reads like a first-rate legal mystery story. We have always known that the 'switch in time that saved nine' in 1937 was a crucial turning point in the history of the jurisprudence of the U.S. Supreme Court. But it wasn't very clear how the anti-New Deal attitudes of the pre-1937 Court derived from what Wiecek calls the 'classical' jurisprudence of the late nineteenth century. Nor have we known how the post-1937, but pre-Warren, New Deal Court built its own distinctive jurisprudence. Wiecek's account tells that story, and in so doing helps us understand the origins of the truly modern jurisprudence of the 1950s. Everyone who wonders how the preconditions of the Warren Court were constructed will want to read this absorbing and important book."--Stanley N. Katz, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University

Please Wait