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>> 1 Introduction Making Legal Historians The subjects of the essays included in Making Legal History range from local government in seventeenth-century New England to executive power in the Reagan administration and illustrate the variety of subjects and methods now being pursued by historians of American law. Some cast new light on perennial questions; others move in entirely new directions. About half focus on private law, the other half on public law. All rest on original research, and each could stand alone as an original contribution to the field. Taken together, they offer a unique and illuminating cross-section of the questions, sources, and narratives used by historians working in the field of American legal history today. It is therefore fitting that these essays were first presented at a conference at New York University School of Law honoring William E. Nelson. Few fields of history as are vital and diverse today as American legal and constitutional history. That was not so in 1965, when Bill Nelson graduated from New York University School of Law and began doctoral studies in history at Harvard University. At that time, legal history often fell between law schools and history departments, with no home in either. Half a century later, the situation is quite different. Legal historians teach in law schools, history departments, and elsewhere, and the field has an array of journals, book series, and professional organizations. Annual conventions feature dozens of scholarly papers, and the literature of the field is growing exponentially. Indeed, the pace of publication outstrips the ability of even the most assiduous readers to keep up. 2 > 3 every session of the Colloquium comes a moment when Nelson leans forward and says, “There are at least two things going on in this paper. Let’s set aside the things that are not all that original and have been done before. What’s new and interesting and hasn’t been done before is this. . . .” As Nelson talks, outlining a sometimes radically reconceptualized version of the paper before the group, the presenter will seize a pen and begin to scribble notes destined to become a roadmap for recasting the project into a new, more interesting and useful form. Many of the leading studies in the field of legal history have first taken shape as papers presented to the Colloquium, and the distance between the original papers and the final articles and books is a measure of the value of the Colloquium and the assistance it has brought to generations of young and established scholars alike. These features make the Golieb Fellowship and the Colloquium unique in the field. Yet Bill gave and continues to give the Goliebs even more. For all of his impressive achievements as a scholar and critic, perhaps his greatest contribution to the field has been the creation of a tight yet expanding network of scholars. Each Golieb is connected to Bill, and through Bill they connect to one another. It is an impressive web. More than one hundred Golieb alumni teach at dozens of law schools and history departments throughout the United States and around the world. Not only is Bill Nelson an indefatigable investigator of past communities; along the way, he has created a vibrant one that did not exist thirty years ago. Now, it’s difficult to imagine the field without it. We offer these essays to Bill in a tribute to his generous spirit and in appreciation of his tireless efforts on behalf of the Golieb Fellows and the field of legal and constitutional history. * * * Our goal is to honor Bill Nelson’s convictions about the historical enterprise , above all the central importance of identifying a genuine problem , undertaking original research, and telling a compelling story. Bill’s “foundational assumption,” as he lays it out in The Legalist Reformation, his pathbreaking analysis of liberal jurisprudence in the courts of twentieth -century New York, is that “historians should rediscover forgotten data rather than rehash what is already familiar.”1 Time and again he has 4 > 5 though, American legal historians do not regularly compare different legal cultures in different places at the same time.8 Instead, they often examine legal ideas, institutions, and practices in the past and, with differing degrees of consciousness, compare and contrast them with formal or functional equivalents in the present. The point is not usually to trace legal genealogies but rather to understand the function and meaning of the law as rooted in particular times and places. Formal training in the...

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