Legal History
The record of past events that deal with the law.
Legal history is a discipline that examines events of the past that pertain to all facets of the law. It includes analysis of particular laws, legal institutions, individuals who operate in the legal system, and the effect of law on society. U.S. legal history is a relatively new subtopic that began to grow dramatically in the 1960s.
Before the 1960s legal history was confined mostly to biographies of famous lawyers and judges and to technical analysis of particular areas of SUBSTANTIVE LAW. In general it was an afterthought. Political historians made reference to important U.S. Supreme Court cases, but there was little in-depth analysis of topics such as CRIMINAL LAW, the law of
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