Law’s History: American Legal Thought and the Transatlantic Turn to History
Cambridge University Press 2012

Excerpt: “By trying to understand these scholars on their own terms, I hope to strip away a century of distortions and oversimplifications by twentieth-century commentators often more interested in their own political and intellectual agendas than in recovering what their predecessors actually thought and achieved. I hope to restore a deservedly prominent place in the history of American legal thought to its founding generation of professional legal scholars. More cosmopolitan, more learned, and more internationally respected than many of the people who have misrepresented or neglected them, they should be recognized and engaged as part of a rich intellectual tradition.”

Praise: “This is a pioneering study of American historical jurisprudence in the late nineteenth century. It is comprehensive, meticulous, and deeply learned. It is cosmopolitan, placing the Americans among their European predecessors and counterparts. And it is eye-opening: the standard picture of this era’s legal scholars as political reactionaries and abstract deductive ‘formalists’ cannot possibly survive this splendid and important book.” —Robert W. Gordon, Professor of Law, Stanford Law School

“A remarkable book. Rabban amply documents the ‘Atlantic crossings’ in legal scholarship at the turn of the twentieth century and unpacks the deep connections between history and law in modern American and continental legal thought. Essential reading for those interested in the intellectual history of law.” —Keith E. Whittington, Princeton University