Essay A - Law

Summary

As the United States transitioned to a complex, large-scale, urban-industrial economy in the decades following the Civil War, the common law’s individual-oriented, rights-centered, fault-based doctrines seemed increasingly inadequate for dealing with systemic problems such as regulating public utilities, curbing monopolies, reducing the social costs of industrial accidents, and managing capital–labor conflict. Rather than reflecting the customs of a unified community, such doctrines appeared to reinforce the fractures of an increasingly divided and unequal society.