Challenging traditional accounts of the development of American private law, Peter Karsten offers an important new perspective on the making of the rules of common law and equity in nineteenth-century courts. The central story of that era, he finds, was a

In mid-sixteenth-century England, people were born into authority and responsibility based on their social status. Thus elite children could designate property or serve in Parliament, while children of the poorer sort might be forced to sign labor contracts or be hanged for arson or picking pockets. By the late eighteenth century, however, English and American law began to emphasize contractual relations based on informed consent rather than on birth status. In By Birth or Consent, Holly Brewer explores how the changing legal status of children illuminates the struggle over consent and status in England and America. As it emerged through religious, political, and legal debates, the concept of meaningful consent challenged the older order of birthright and became central to the development of democratic political theory. The struggle over meaningful consent had tremendous political and social consequences, affecting the whole order of society. It granted new powers to fathers and guardians at the same time that it challenged those of masters and kings. Brewer's analysis reshapes the debate about the origins of modern political ideology and makes connections between Reformation religious debates, Enlightenment philosophy, and democratic political theory.

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Vols. 65-96 include "Central law journal's international law list."

In When Prophets Preach: Leadership and the Politics of the Pulpit, Jay Augustine urges twenty-first-century preachers to speak openly against social injustice, establishing such preaching as a key component of prophetic leadership. Beginning with the premise that the church was birthed to address salvation in the "kingdom-to-come" and social justice in the "kingdom-at-hand," Augustine presents prophetic preaching as part of the ministry of reconciliation Jesus left to the church. Addressing topics such as abusive immigration policies and racial injustices, he urges the church to return to its foundation of prophetic leadership as exemplified not only by Jesus but by the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament apostles. When Prophets Preach demonstrates that faithfulness to this ministry requires preachers to break the pulpit silence. Then the church can lead in bridging social and ethnic gaps among its members. It can show society at large how to heal many of the social, economic, and political divisions in our world, the very rifts that underscore the need for social justice ministries and that necessitate prophetic preaching.