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3 - Lawrence Friedman and the Bane of Functionalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 October 2011

By
Victoria Saker Woeste
Edited by
Robert W. Gordon  and
Morton J. Horwitz
Victoria Saker Woeste
Affiliation:
American Bar Foundation
Robert W. Gordon
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
Morton J. Horwitz
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
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Summary

My aims in this chapter are modest. The first is to provide an overview of the corpus of Lawrence Friedman's scholarship. The second is to distill one or two of the essential ideas and themes that in my view emerge from Friedman's work and from his engagement with other historians. One recursive theme is the way that, for Friedman, theory and method are intellectually fused. It is difficult, if not impossible, to separate Friedman's theoretical insights into law and society and legal change from his methodology, his reliance on and analysis of trial court cases, and his use of individual stories to talk about the down-on-the ground meaning of law. This fusion of ideas and method positions Friedman intellectually within the legal history community and within legal scholarship more generally. That observation leads to the second theme I want to identify: the way in which Friedman has come to represent, sometimes all by himself, one clearly demarcated side of an ongoing argument raging among those who seek to get inside the heads of nineteenth-century judges. To explore this theme, I map the interesting fruits of a relatively recent exchange between Friedman and the author of a book with which he took issue, an exchange that both recapitulates and moves forward a dialogue Friedman began more than forty years ago.

Type
Chapter
Information
Law, Society, and History
Themes in the Legal Sociology and Legal History of Lawrence M. Friedman
 , pp. 43 - 51
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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References

Friedman, Lawrence M. (1965). Contract Law in America: A Social and Economic Case Study. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
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Friedman, Lawrence M. (1973). A History of American Law. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Friedman, Lawrence M. (1977). Law and Society: An Introduction. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Friedman, Lawrence M. (1984). American Law. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.Google Scholar
Friedman, Lawrence M. (1985a). A History of American Law. 2d edition. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
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