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When Spanish conquistadores marched north from Mexico's interior, they encountered one harsh reality that eclipsed all others: the importance of water in an arid land.Covering a time when legal precedents were being set for many water rights laws, this study contributes much to an understanding of the modern Southwest, especially disputes involving Indian water rights.The paperback edition includes a new afterword by the author which discusses the results of recent research. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

Required reading
This book should be required reading for all Civics teachers, lawyers, and judges especially the Supreme Court.

Blends Native American issues with overall racism issues
Robert A. Williams Jr.'s LIKE A LOADED WEAPON: THE REHNQUIST COURT, INDIAN RIGHTS, AND THE LEGAL HISTORY OF RACISM IN AMERICAblends Native American issues with overall racism issues, using these issues to consider how racist language are still used in Indian law to deny rights. Racist language has long legalized a form of racial superiority of whites in America, Williams argues: his background as law professor and American Indian studies professor allows for a unique dual perspective. ... Read more

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This treatise examines the enlightenment model of law from a post-modern perspective. It introduces the work of French thinkers such as Foucault, Derrida and Baudrillard, in terms of their implications for analytical and sociological theories of law which have their roots in the Enlightenment. ... Read more

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Americans have always regarded farming as a special calling, one imbued with the Jeffersonian values of individualism and self-sufficiency. As Victoria Saker Woeste demonstrates, farming's cultural image continued to shape Americans' expectations of rural society long after industrialization radically transformed the business of agriculture. Even as farmers enthusiastically embraced cooperative marketing to create unprecedented industry-wide monopolies and control prices, they claimed they were simply preserving their traditional place in society. In fact, the new legal form of cooperation far outpaced judicial and legislative developments at both the state and federal levels, resulting in a legal and political struggle to redefine the place of agriculture in the industrial market.

Woeste shows that farmers were adept at both borrowing such legal forms as the corporate trust for their own purposes and obtaining legislative recognition of the new cooperative style. In the process, however, the first rule of capitalism—every person for him- or herself—trumped the traditional principle of cooperation. After 1922, state and federal law wholly endorsed cooperation's new form. Indeed, says Woeste, because of its corporate roots, this model of cooperation fit so neatly with the regulatory paradigms of the first half of the twentieth century that it became an essential policy of the modern administrative state. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Social Analysis with Legal History
Are cooperatives for farmers like labor unions?Are they like corporate monopolies?Are they another sort of entity?These questions were directly relevant for the raisin growers of California in the early 1900's and for the federal government.Saker Woeste provides detailed analysis of legislation and federal court decisions about the thorny status of the cooperatives--a debate in which the involved parties were creating their own precedents.

Saker Woeste's book has a liveliness beyond what the legal topic might lead us to think.Mixed with these discussions of the law are colorful episodes that few of us outside California realized before.The book features violent night riders, tales of ethnic pressures and prejudices (especially regarding the Armenian- American community), eccentricity and idealism in the characters of the Cooperative's leaders, and the marketing story of how Sun-Maid got lots of Americans to gobble their raisins.

So the book features lots of law with lots of social history, marketing, even violence.And a wealth of pictures helps the reading.Especially interesting are the early Sun-Maid advertisements.Fans of the histories of California, of agriculture, or of American law would enjoy the book.

For Easterners, good comparison/contrasts are studies of Kentucky's Black Patch War--Night Riders among the tobacco farmers. ... Read more

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This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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Documents of American Constitutional and Legal History, 2/e, is a two-volume companion to Urofsky and Finkelman's successful text, A March of Liberty, 2/e. Organized chronologically, this documents reader skillfully weaves together constitutional and legal history, offering students a mix of both frequently cited and lesser-known-but equally important-historical documents and court decisions that have been instrumental in shaping the nation's constitutional development. The editors provide an introduction to each document, which summarizes its significance and places it within its historical context. Each introduction is followed by a brief list of suggestions for further reading. Both volumes contain the complete text of the U.S. Constitution for ease of reference.
Now in its second edition, Documents of American Constitutional and Legal History has been updated to reflect the most recent constitutional and legal scholarship, including material on the latest Supreme Court decisions and the recent presidential election controversy. In addition, the introductory notes and suggested reading sections have also been revised. Volume II covers the period from the age of industrialization to the present. Documents of American Constitutional and Legal History, 2/e, is an essential resource for courses in U.S. Constitutional history and legal history, as well as constitutional law courses in other disciplines. ... Read more

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Christopher C. Langdell (1826-1906) is one of the most influential figures in the history of American professional education. As dean of Harvard Law School from 1870 to 1895, he conceived, designed, and built the educational model that leading professional schools in virtually all fields subsequently emulated. In this first full-length biography of the educator and jurist, Bruce Kimball explores Langdell's controversial role in modern professional education and in jurisprudence.

Langdell founded his model on the idea of academic meritocracy. According to this principle, scholastic achievement should determine one's merit in professional life. Despite fierce opposition from students, faculty, alumni, and legal professionals, he designed and instituted a formal system of innovative policies based on meritocracy. This system's components included the admission requirement of a bachelor's degree, the sequenced curriculum and its extension to three years, the hurdle of annual examinations for continuation and graduation, the independent career track for professional faculty, the transformation of the professional library into a scholarly resource, the inductive pedagogy of teaching from cases, the organization of alumni to support the school, and a new, highly successful financial strategy.

Langdell's model was subsequently adopted by leading law schools, medical schools, business schools, and the schools of other professions. By the time of his retirement as dean of Harvard Law School, Langdell had instituted the future model for professional education throughout the United States. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Architect of Modern American Legal Education
Christopher Columbus Langdell (1826-2006) reshaped legal education in the United States during his period as professor and Dean at Harvard Law School between 1870 and 1895. This book is a solid case study of the innovations he initiated at HLS, but it has a broader significance:Langdell also set the stage for the professionalization of professional school education generally through his influential leadership at HLS. And not incidentally, this also is a very effective biography of Langdell as well; one much needed since I am not aware of any prior biography of Langdell exhibiting such depth and experience.

After covering Langell's youth, education and period of practice on Wall Street, the biography really hits its stride when Langdell joins the HLS. Langdell was very upset by the corruption of courts and lawyers he had witnessed in New York.He concluded that rigorous professional and scientific legal education was the only way to immunize practitioners from Tweed-ring type corruption. And this meant rigorous training.Among his innovations (that have become standard in law schools) was the case method of instruction, focusing on case books; rigorous exams based on factual problem-oriented questions; sequencing of courses from the basic to the more advanced; three-year curriculum; requiring a college degree for admission to law school; an honors program; and rigorous Socratic questioning of students.All this seems familiar today to those of use who went to law school; it wasn't when Langdell was Dean and he faced both internal and external critics who bitterly criticized his innovations.

The book is outstanding in covering both Langdell and HLS.The author, who teaches at Ohio State's respected School of Education Policy & Leadership, did a two year fellowship at HLS, and is currently co-authoring a two-volume bicentennial history of HLS.He has been workong on Langdell since 1995--so he knows the material extremely well.There is, however, one fly (perhaps a big one) in the ointment: the author several times rather overdoes criticism of Justice Holmes, who had criticized Langdell as early as the 1880's for what he saw as a legal approach based on scientific principles and excessive reliance on logic, rather than putting law into the social context that Holmes preferred.There has been quite a debate in the law reviews on whether Holmes misunderstood Langdell, or only understood him all too well.The book at times becames a spirited brief for Langdell, with speculative psychological theorizing as to why Holmes was critical of Langdell (which struck me as much pap).Wherever one comes out in this debate, and the author makes a strong case for Langdell, the author's discussion enhances our understanding of legal thought during the close of the 19th and the early 20th century. The book is supported by extensive notes (fortunately, at the base of the page) and a stupendous 61 page bibliography.At last, it seems, Langdell is getting his due in this fine biography.

... Read more

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Stevens, Robert. Law School: Legal Education in America from the 1850s to the 1980s.Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, [1983]. xvi, 334 pp. Reprinted 2001 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN 1-58477-199-2. Cloth. $85. Comprehensive history of over a century of legal education in America. Examines the law school institution and its impact on the legal profession and the society it serves. This highly lauded work won a Certificate of Merit from the American Bar Association upon its original publication. Stevens' distinguished career in education and law includes his seventeen-year term as professor of law at Yale University and nine-year term as president of Haverford College, during which tenure this work was published. Well-annotated and indexed, with a thorough bibliography. ... Read more

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Tracing war as a legal concept from Roman times through to the twentieth century, Stephen Neff reveals its various roles as a law-enforcement operation, duel between states and a "crime against the peace."He also considers the post World War II definition of war as an international law-enforcement mechanism under U.N. auspices. Although unsuccessful, this attempt did help transform war into a humanitarian, rather than a policy problem. This book interests historians, students of international relations and international lawyers. ... Read more

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Baker and Milsom's Sources of English Legal History is the definitive source book on the development of English private law.This new edition has been comprehensively revised and udpated to incorporate new sources discovered since the original publication in 1986, and to reflect developments in recent scholarship.

All the sources included are translated into modern English, offering an accessible inroad to the leading primary materials for students of the history of the common law.

The sources themselves - revealing the operation of courts across a wide range of personal and economic disputes - offer a rich resource for historians researching the development of the English government, society, and economy.Their significance in shaping the common law spans beyond England, and ensures the collection is an essential reference point for all those interested in the history of the common law in any jurisdiction. ... Read more

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Eileen Spring presents a fresh interpretation of the history of inheritance among the English gentry and aristocracy. In a work that recasts both the history of real property law and the history of the family, she finds that one of the principal and determinative features of upper-class real property inheritance was the exclusion of females. This exclusion was accomplished by a series of legal devices designed to nullify the common-law rules of inheritance under which—had they prevailed—40 percent of English land would have been inherited or held by women.

Current ideas of family development portray female inheritance as increasing in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but Spring argues that this is a misperception, resulting from an incomplete consideration of the common-law rules. Female rights actually declined, reaching their nadir in the eighteenth century. Spring shows that there was a centuries-long conflict between male and female heirs, a conflict that has not been adequately recognized until now. ... Read more

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A compelling blend of legal and political history, this book chronicles the largest tenant rebellion in U.S. history. From its beginning in the rural villages of eastern New York in 1839 until its collapse in 1865, the Anti-Rent movement impelled the state's governors, legislators, judges, and journalists, as well as delegates to New York's bellwether constitutional convention of 1846, to wrestle with two difficult problems of social policy. One was how to put down violent tenant resistance to the enforcement of landlord property and contract rights. The second was how to abolish the archaic form of land tenure at the root of the rent strike.

Charles McCurdy considers the public debate on these questions from a fresh perspective. Instead of treating law and politics as dependent variables--as mirrors of social interests or accelerators of social change--he highlights the manifold ways in which law and politics shaped both the pattern of Anti-Rent violence and the drive for land reform. In the process, he provides a major reinterpretation of the ideas and institutions that diminished the promise of American democracy in the supposed "golden age" of American law and politics. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A valuable read
McCurdy's book was a valuable read. The only people that could be called winners were the ones willing to compromise. The landlords rented raw land, but demanded the value of the land plus the value of the improvements the tenant furnished.The problem was caused by not having a contract that bound just the two signers; it was bound to the land, and following owners. The requirement for a days work was a hold over from feudal times when a tenant wasn't equal, but was called a servant.* The contract wasn't between two equals. I would have liked to see more on the actual start of the movement in the 1750's Race Mountain in the Taconic Range is named for William Race, a tenant farmer who was murdered in 1755 refusing to pay rent to Robert Livingston. I also note Judge Henry Hogeboom was the son of murdered Columbia County SheriffCornelius Hogeboom.The Sheriff was shot in 1791 in Hillsdale trying to collect rent for Van Rensselaer.
* lease in the Livingston papers signed by Livingston and Matthues Abraham Van Deusen in 1686.It required work on the road to the Manor by two servants. The second servant was a slave bound to the farm.

I wrote: Rebels of the North, How Land Policy Caused the Civil War ... Read more

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In this brilliant and immensely readable book, Lawrence M. Friedman tells the whole fascinating story of American law from its beginnings in the colonies to the present day. By showing how close the life of the law is to the economic and political life of the country, he makes a complex subject understandable and engrossing. A History of American Law presents the achievements and failures of the American legal system in the context of America's commercial and working world, family practices, and attitudes toward property, government, crime, and justice.

Now completely revised and updated, this groundbreaking work incorporates new material regarding slavery, criminal justice, and twentieth-century law. For laymen and students alike, this remains the only comprehensive authoritative history of American law. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

History of Law That's Accessible to Non-Lawyers
I am neither a lawyer nor a law student, but a researcher who occasionally ingests advice from lawyers about employment law.I have found this book useful as general background in legal issues so I can bring some perspective to these discussions.In particular, it has helped me follow some of my colleagues' references to legal precedents and how recent decisions fit into the historical mosaic of American law.

Four primary sections of the book organize the development of American law into the Colonial Period, the Revolution to the Middle of the Nineteenth Century, then to the Close of the Nineteenth Century, and through the end of the Twentieth Century.Individual chapters within these sections--27 of them--cover broad legal topics such as Administrative Law and Regulation of Business, Crime and Punishment, and the Law of Corporations.I'll recommend as most interesting the Growth of the Law chapter in the Twentieth Century section.It outlines evolution of the law in employment, civil liberties, discrimination and religion.Whether or not you agree with the development of the law in these areas, you will leave this chapter well informed.The author seems to have done his homework, and communicates his findings effectively.

I cannot vouch directly for the legal accuracy of Lawrence Friedman's book.I can say that whenever one of my attorney colleagues has pounced on a flaw in my grasp of American law, it has very clearly been my error rather than the book's.I plan to keep referring to it.

Incredibly Informative
I have just finished my first year of law school, and this book was a wonderfully informative read.The premise of the book, that progression in law coincides with progression with social as well as economic factors, is extremely well-founded and confirmed throughout the book.It was fascinating to re-visit cases I had studied this past year through the lens of both historical and social contexts.The true genius of this book, however, is that you don't need to be a lawyer or a law student to appreciate it.To be sure, those with a greater understanding of American jurisprudence will likely get more out of this book, but I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in not just how the American legal system works but more importantly WHY it works the way it does.This book is truly a treasure, and I continue to be amazed with Professor Friedman's exhaustive and comprehensive research.I look forward to re-visiting this book throughout the rest of law school and through my legal career.

History of Law That's Accessible to Non-Lawyers
I am neither a lawyer nor a law student, but a researcher who occasionally ingests advice from lawyers about employment law.I have found this book useful as general background in legal issues so I can bring some perspective to these discussions.In particular, it has helped me follow some of my colleagues' references to legal precedents and how recent decisions fit into the historical mosaic of American law.

Four primary sections of the book organize the development of American law into the Colonial Period, the Revolution to the Middle of the Nineteenth Century, then to the Close of the Nineteenth Century, and through the end of the Twentieth Century.Individual chapters within these sections--27 of them--cover broad legal topics such as Administrative Law and Regulation of Business, Crime and Punishment, and the Law of Corporations.I'll recommend as most interesting the Growth of the Law chapter in the Twentieth Century section.It outlines evolution of the law in employment, civil liberties, discrimination and religion.Whether or not you agree with the development of the law in these areas, you will leave this chapter well informed.The author seems to have done his homework, and communicates his findings effectively.

I cannot vouch directly for the legal accuracy of Lawrence Friedman's book.I can say that whenever one of my attorney colleagues has pounced on a flaw in my grasp of American law, it has very clearly been my error rather than the book's.I plan to keep referring to it.

Everyone should read this.
I am reading a chapter a night-just delightful. The law of slavery was a real eye opener. Every chapter is amazing. The one on state constitutions puts things in perspective. It really shows one how things fit together in society-how legal doctrines got that way. It also deals with the issue and theme of how and why law changes.

I am a tax accountant with a Masters of Taxation. You'll laugh but you see the origin of many tax terms.

I can see rereading this chapter by chapter-it's that good.

It's a foundational book.

Ted Humphreville -Los Angeles

Author is a biggot!!!
On page 377 of this book, the author puts in his own opinion of history and I quote, "The Mormom rebellion against American was over. Plural mariages faded into history, even though a few diviant offshoots of the main Mormon branch secretly kept this practise alive. No doubt, thousands of good Americans siged with relief at the downfall of Satan, and the triumph of American morality."

I'm sorry, to have purchased this book. I assumed this would be a history of law book, but instead found it a disgusting waste of work, from a biggoted author. There was no need to put down any religion, and yet this author mid book, is calling an entire religion "Satan" worshippers. What does that opinion have to do with the history of law???DO NOT BUY!!! ... Read more

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Winner of an Alpha Sigma Nu Book Award

The inability of American society to tolerate the peculiar institutions embraced by Mormons was one of the major events in the religious history of nineteenth-century America. Zion in the Courts explores one aspect of this collision between the Mormons and the mainstream: the Mormons' efforts to establish their own court system--one appropriate to the distinctive political, social, and economic practices they envisioned as Zion--and the pressures applied by the federal legal system to bring them to heel.

This first paperback edition includes two new introductory pieces in which the authors discuss the Mormon emphasis on settling disputes outside the court, a practice that foreshadows current trends toward arbitration and mediation. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

History or modern POV, I prefer history
I stopped read these reviews, prior to purchasing this for my father, one of a long line of Mormon lawyers. I read with care the review of Mr. Launius, and his disdainful commentary influencing my choice. When readers assume that their personal, or intellectual or historical point of view needs to trump the history of events, we generally find flawed history. Those books which analyse Mormon History fall prey to these abuses readily. As the subject is not one most readers understand, they are not able to judge fairly between gadflies who attack history based up their personal belief systems. A quick check on Mr. Launius name readily reveals he is not enamoured of conservative, clear and simple history. Nor does he have the legal qualifications to judge this kind of history. Beyond that, the criticisms are based upon arguments that do not stand up well to scrutiny. Those people who claimed they felt "fear" in the presence of Mormons,to the extent that the slaughtered them, or in the case of the Governor of Missouri, issued an extinction order against them, did everything possible not just to scare them out of the Western fringe of America, they forced them into that long Pilgrimage to Utah when so many died. It's pretentious at the least to claim that a people who fled, many of the dead of winter, their prophet slaughtered, the government against them, were in any way able to threaten the power structure of the time. As the notes to the book mention, church courts only covered spiritual matters; the law of the land covered everyone else as equally as possible.If one does the research or reads the history of the time, one finds that despite all the negative press, Mormon were some of the first to vote, were highly respected by Susan B. Anthony and her cohort, and even hidden away in the desert of Utah were forming a more equal society, with few poor or needy among them.There is a reason this religion is still growing so quickly today.

On the basis of these principles, and the writers knowledge of the era covered, I expect my father to enjoy it greatly.I will update this as I read it myself.

An Acceptable, but Flawed Analysis
"Zion in the Courts" is a pretty good analysis of the legal issues affecting the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1830 to 1990. Both authors are fine scholars and bring a wealth of understanding to the subject. In the process they explore the legal history of the often rocky relationships between Mormons and other Americans. They also offer a discussion of internal Mormon legal actions such as ecclesiastical courts and during the pioneer Utah period, adjudication of water rights in the arid territory.

But Edwin Brown Firmage and Richard Collin Mangrum fall sway to the Mormon myth of "persecuted innocence." Indeed, the authors of "Zion in the Courts" fail to move beyond the interpretive framework prearranged to lean in a pro-Latter-day Saint direction. While there may be some room for permutations of interpretation, Latter-day Saint leaders have essentially drawn a line in the sand about what may and may not be considered as an interpretive framework and most historians have accepted it (or perhaps have never even considered going beyond it) because of their religious convictions. Those who have ventured too far, notably D. Michael Quinn and Lavina Fielding Anderson, have been excommunicated from the church.

As a result the authors of "Zion in the Courts," despite the book's other very real qualities, assume without any serious discussion the viability and justification of a Mormon theocracy, i.e., Zion. The authors assert that the zionic goal inevitably led to persecution endured by an innocent church through both legal and extralegal means. They wrote that "The story of the persecution Mormons suffered through the institutions of the legal system, and of their efforts to establish their own legal system--one appropriate to Zion... illustrates democracy's potential to oppress an insular, minority community;..." (p. xiv-xv).

The authors apparently believe that theocracy is both possible and desirable, but such a quest for empire mandates by this perspective would always run against the grain of the American mainstream, and legal institutions by definition would oppose it. Far from democracy's "oppression" of a minority, I would suggest, the nation's legal system would assert itself to defend the cherished principles of the Constitution against a perceived threat to liberty from a theocracy bent on taking control. Debate over whether or not liberty was really threatened by Mormon theocracy is moot, but undoubtedly non-Mormons considered the church's secular power a threat to the Constitution. The authors fail to appreciate the inherent tension between democracy and theocracy. They also seem not to appreciate that there might be other equally valid approaches toward Mormonism's zionic quest. For some it represented a spiritual condition where righteousness and justness were partners with goodwill and charity, a position that eschewed the secular, theocratic aspects that always created ill-will between Mormons and other Americans. Unfortunately, the authors of "Zion in the Courts" did not consider criticisms of Mormonism's quest for empire-- criticisms that were coherent, internally consistent, and deserving of serious consideration. They accept at face value the Mormon dialectic. As a result, "Zion in the Courts" represents both the worst and the best of the recent writing on the Mormon past.

A Great Book
This is the first, and to date the only, book that attempts to tell the 19th century legal history of the Mormon Church.The book is divided into three parts.The first section basically gives the legal history of the church during the life time of its founder Joseph Smith.The second section details the intensive persecution of the church by the federal government over the practice of plural marriage.The third section describes in detail the ecclesiastical court system that basically served all of the judicial needs of pioneer Mormons.This section in particular is fabulous.Firmage and Mangrum had incredible access to confidential church court records and the detail and scope of their treatment dwarfs any other work on the subject.

However the book is not without flaws.There are some gaps in the research.For example, the landmark Reynolds decision is dicussed in detail, but one gets the impression that the only documents consulted were the published legal ones (opinions and briefs).What about journals and letters by the participants?These sorts of gaps abound.

On the whole, however, this is a wonderful work.Law is one of the hitherto neglected regions of Mormon studies, and Mormon perspectives are among the hitherto neglected possibilities of legal studies.Despite a facinating legal history, Mormon historians have done compartively little on the subject.Likewise, despite Mormons at the highest levels of the legal establishment -- e.g., Rex E. Lee (Solicitor General) or Dallin H. Oaks (Dean of Chicago Law School) -- there have been compartatively few attempts at sustained and scholarly Mormon perspectives on the law.Anyone interested in providing such perspectives should read this book. ... Read more

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The lawyer-dominated adversary system of criminal trial, which now typifies practice in Anglo-American legal systems, developed in England in the eighteenth century.Using hitherto unexplored sources from London's Old Bailey Court, Professor Langbein shows how and why lawyers were able to capture the trial, and he supplies a path-breaking account of the formation of the law of criminal evidence.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Learning from legal history
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. noted the importance of considering history and experience when understanding the law.In The Common Law (1881), Mr. Holmes noted "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience."And, in a Supreme Court decision (New York Trust Co. v. Eisner, 256 U.S. 345, 349 (1921)), Justice Holmes stated "Upon this point a page of history is worth a volume of logic."Professor Langbein's book provides a good illustration of how an examination of legal history can provide important factual context to better understand some of the strengths and weaknesses of the adversary system of criminal justice.Although the book is not for casual reading, it is written in a style that can be understandable for a conscientious reader who is not a lawyer or professional historian.Anyone interested in better understanding of the origins of American criminal trials should consider reading this book.

Classic Treatment of the Subject
Langbein's work is revolutionary in its use of the Old Bailey Sessions papers as a tool for scholarly research. For all who are interested in criminal trials in the Britain in the 18th Century, this work is absolutely fundamental.

A Terrific Resource
This a really terrific explanation of the history of our modern adversarial system and would be particularly useful to trial lawyers who work within the adversarial criminal system.(It's one thing to know that one CAN object to hearsay...but haven't you ever wondered how that particular rule evolved?) ... Read more

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Richard Mendelson brings together his expertise as both a Napa Valley lawyer and a winemaker into this accessible overview of American wine law from colonial times to the present. It is a story of fits and starts that provides a fascinating chronicle of the history of wine in the United States told through the lens of the law. From the country's early support for wine as a beverage to the moral and religious fervor that resulted in Prohibition and to the governmental controls that followed Repeal, Mendelson takes us to the present day--and to the emergence of an authentic and significant wine culture. He explains how current laws shape the wine industry in such areas as pricing and taxation, licensing, appellations, health claims and warnings, labeling, and domestic and international commerce. As he explores these and other legal and policy issues, Mendelson lucidly highlights the concerns that have made wine alternatively the demon or the darling of American society--and at the same time illuminates the ways in which lives and livelihoods are affected by the rise and fall of social movements. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Interesting book
This book is very interesting and easy to read. It is very istructive and the author demostrated he has full knowledge of the matter that he writing about.
You can learn important information in the history of wine in America.

A concise and comprehensive history of America's love-hate relationship with alcohol
Although Thomas Jefferson and others envisioned a United States of America with a thriving wine culture, the temperance and prohibitionist movements pushed the country in a very different direction.Mendelson traces the early development of viticulture in America, to the rising tide of Prohibitionism, culminating in the failed experiment of the Eighteenth Amendment, to repeal and the jumbled mess of state and federal regulation that followed, to the roaring growth of the wine industry since the 1970s.There is interesting discussion of the battle to define American Viticultural Areas and of recent case law that addresses interstate sale of wine.He concludes that there is still a long way to go before an "authentic wine culture" can take root in America -- with a rational system for the regulation of wine production and sales to go along with it.

It's a great read and includes an excellent bibliography for those who want to dig deeper.


... Read more