Overview

Through the prism of litigation practice and tactics, Purcell explores the dynamic relationship between legal and social change. He studies changing litigation patterns in suits between individuals and national corporations over tort claims for personal injuries and contract claims for insurance benefits. Purcell refines the ""progressive"" claim that the federal courts favored business enterprise during this time, identifying specific manners and times in which the federal courts reached decisions both in favor of and against national corporations. He also identifies 1892-1908 as a critical period in the evolution of the twentieth century federal judicial system.

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9780195073294

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Reviews

A superb and important book. It is at once readable and closely reasoned. Perhaps most importantly, it combines a meticulously told but potentially abstruse story with a methodology that allows Purcell to draw general conclusions of large scale.--American Journal of Legal History [An} innovative and magisterial work...Litigation and Inequality is one of the most important works of American legal history to appear in our time. --New York University Law Review A compelling history.... --Social Science Quarterly Advances a new way of thinking about a portentous era in U.S. legal history. --Michigan Law Review A significant contribution to literature on the controversy over the role of law in allocating economic power, reinforcing more traditional Progressive assertions of the pro-business character of US law. --Choice A superb and important book. It is at once readable and closely reasoned. Perhaps most importantly, it combines a meticulously told but potentially abstruse story with a methodology that allows Purcell to draw general conclusions of large scale.--American Journal of Legal History [An} innovative and magisterial work...Litigation and Inequality is one of the most important works of American legal history to appear in our time. --New York University Law Review A compelling history.... --Social Science Quarterly Advances a new way of thinking about a portentous era in U.S. legal history. --Michigan Law Review A significant contribution to literature on the controversy over the role of law in allocating economic power, reinforcing more traditional Progressive assertions of the pro-business character of US law. --Choice A magnificent book. Strikingly original in its thesis and methodological approach, solidly researched and documented, clearly and carefully written....Purcell does for the arcana of federal diversity doctrines what Perry Miller did for the similarly hermetic doctrines of New England theology: he rolls up his sleeves, masters the phenomenal intricacies, and reveals the hidden drama and tensions. Purcell then takes the additional step of demonstrating the important social implications of technical legal doctrines. His ability to uncover the legal significance of, for example, growing urbanization and access to automobiles, is extraordinarily impressive, as are his arguments about the importance of the minimum amount-in-controversy for federal diversity jurisdiction. Purcell's efforts to articulate the necessity of examining an entire litigation system are well taken and should prove methodologically influential. --Robert C. Post, University of California at Berkeley School of Law [An] innovative and magisterial work of legal history....Rather than presenting an abstract, historical-doctrinal analysis of federal diversity jurisdiction, or a social history of the approaches to litigation by various kinds of plaintiffs and defendants within the context of diversity jurisdiction, Purcell analyzes the shared world of litigation strategies, institutional powers and constraints, and doctrinal possibilities and limitations within which the various groups composing the social litigation system operated. --New York University Law Review Conceptualizing the relationship between litigation and inequality in systemic terms provides Purcell with a powerful tool for assessing the law's social meaning and practical impact at any one point in time and for interpreting the nature, sources, and social implications of change over time. --Journal of American History [A] rich, detailed legal history....A tour de force. Purcell masterfully sets the groundwork for the lay reader and dependably guides the exploration of a necessarily technical topic.....This book should receive a wide audience. Legal historians and general practitioners interested in the period 1870 to 1940 will obviously find the work important....Economic historians particularly interested in institutions or game-theoretic approaches to historical analysis will find the book a rich source of ideas for future research. --Journal of Economic History

a magnificent book. Strikingly original in its thesis and methodology ... will become a classic. * Robert Post, University of California, Berkeley *

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