Dismantling American Common Law: Liberty and Justice in Our Transformed Courts

The American system of law has experienced a quiet revolution that has gone largely unnoticed by political scientists and legal scholars. The change that has occurred-- the abandonment of the common law foundation on which the American judicial system was built--has important consequences for democratic politics in the United States and abroad. Dismantling American Common Law: Liberty and Justice in Our Transformed Courts tracks the development of the American common law through historical and quantitative analysis and a philosophical inquiry of the founding. Author Kyle Scott seeks to reclaim this lost tradition of common law, which was vital as a legitimizing force and consensus-building mechanism at the American founding and will grow in importance for newly democratizing nations around the world.