"Historia prawa amerykańskiego" by G. Edward White, published by the Lodz University Press, is an accessible study tracing the development of the United States legal system from colonial times to the present day. The author shows how law shaped the American state, society and economy, and how it has changed under the influence of political and social transformations. He discusses, among other things, the following issues:
- the role of courts,
- the importance of the constitution,
- the evolution of civil rights and the impact of key disputes and rulings on the operation of the state.
Because law is so pervasive a dimension of American life, its history is particularly important. In that history, one becomes introduced to the central defining themes of American culture: geographic isolation, economic abundance, transatlantic settlement, the relations between European settlers and indigenous tribes, African American slavery, the importance of agricultural householding, the growth of industrial enterprise and urbanization, the emergence of the United States as a world power. In reviewing that history, one becomes aware that law has been intimately connected to each of those themes, reacting to them and helping to shape them. To study American legal history is to come in contact with the forces that have given the United States its unique identity
– the author writes in the introduction.
G. Edward White is a lawyer and Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. He is a specialist in American legal history, particularly constitutional law. G. Edward White is an author of nearly one hundred and fifty scholarly works, among which the three-volume study of American law, Law in American History, published between 2012 and 2019 by Oxford University Press, deserves special mention.
Dr. hab Łukasz Jan Korporowicz, Associate Professor at the University of Lodz, working at the Department of Roman Law, Faculty of Law and Administration is the author of the translation.
