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5 - Regionalism in Early American Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

By
David Konig
Edited by
Michael Grossberg  and
Christopher Tomlins
Christopher Tomlins
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine
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Summary

Early Americans created regionally particular legal systems. Two centuries of nationhood have since brought a great measure of uniformity in certain areas of American law – the adoption of federal rules of procedure, the growth of a federal judiciary, a uniform commercial code, and a national system of legal education are just a few. Yet in certain respects American law remains regionally specific. The nation’s ninety-four federal district courts, for example, are grouped into regional circuits whose decisions occasionally conflict and are not resolved. Perhaps in our own time regional distinctiveness is stronger in American culture and political discourse than in actual legal reality. Nevertheless, both its factual existence and its cultural potency are clear.

American regionalism has its roots in early America. In the case of law, the particular goals and variant experiences of unrelated colonization ventures led to the reanimation and recombination of English legal practices in different ways in the new environments. Colonists emphasized some English practices while rejecting others, resulting ultimately in the emergence of three new and distinct regional configurations – the Chesapeake and its Southern neighbors, New England, and the Middle Colonies.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Law in America , pp. 144 - 177
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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