Overview

This collection focuses on the period from 1763 through the mid-nineteenth century. In Louisiana and the Floridas, the territorial ambitions of Britain, France, and Spain, as well as the new American Republic, led to a rapidly shifting series of political and cultural changes. The result in the region was the creation of complex hybrids of social mores, customs, and legal ideas and institutions. Of particular significance were the land claims that inevitably followed transfers of sovereignty and legal systems, the social and legal entrenchment of established elites and the institution of slavery, as well as a legacy of extra-legal violence and folk justice. The fluid borders of Louisiana and the Floridas, both East and West, exposed the flexible social identities and political loyalties of those who were settled there. Indeed, later accounts of the period and place have often misunderstood mixed motives, and contemporary rhetoric, of its subjects and citizens. Through a mix of different historiographical methods, a broad understanding of legal and social history, and the lens of plural comparative contexts, this collection tells us much about continuity and change in a critical transition period for the region, as well as for the modern Western nation-state and its increasingly common laws. xxxv, 297 pp. 10 illustrations. Talbot Publishing (an imprint of The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.)

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9781616195847

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The French Revolution gave us not only the concepts of nationalism and popular sovereignty but many of the legal concepts still with us today. How they materialized in a mixed jurisdiction of common and civilian law in post-Purchase Louisiana, during clashes less about culture than conflicts of interest, forms the heart of this thought-provoking collection. You won't find a more succinct and lucid exposition of these and other knotty subjects between the covers of many other books. Lawrence N. Powell, Professor Emeritus, Department of History, Tulane University

Author Information

Seán Patrick Donlan is Associate Dean of the Thompson Rivers University Faculty of Law (Canada). His research interests include Irish history, comparative law, and legal history. Most recently, he edited Comparative Legal History (Hart/Taylor & Francis (UK), 2013-2016) and (with D Heirbaut), The Law's Many Bodies: Studies in Legal Hybridity and Jurisdictional Complexity, c1600-1900 (Duncker & Humblot (Germany), 2015). Vernon Valentine Palmer is Thomas Pickles Professor of Law and Director of the Eason Weinmann Center for International and Comparative Law, Tulane University. He is a titular member of the International Academy of Comparative Law, recipient of the Légion d'Honneur, and the founder and president of the World Society of Mixed Jurisdictions. His research interests mainly concern comparative law, civil law, and legal history. His recent publications include Mixed Jurisdictions Worldwide: The Third Legal Family (CUP 2ed 2012) and Through the Codes Darkly: Slave Law and Civil Law in Louisiana (Lawbook Exchange 2012).

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