According to Anthony Chase, American law has undergone a series of radial transformations that correspond to four broad periods of American history: precapitalist, capitalist, state capitalist, and global capitalist. Laws may be written down in black and white, but as economic and social history unfold, Chase argues, the spirit of the law slips quietly from the letter, leaving room for interpretation. This gray space is where legal analysis and debate take place - and legal institutions develop. Drawing on an impressive range of sources - from classic texts by Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels, to Norman Mailer lectures and the critical legal studies theory of Morton Horwitz - Law and History explores what the author calls "the intriguing mystery of how law and history fit together." How precisely have long-term economic cycles influenced American legal doctrine? How have movements in U.S. social history shaped the development of our legal institutions?

Why do people consult the law? Why do we consult lawyers? Law's Evolution and Human Understanding articulates a fresh conception of law that builds on Oliver Wendell Holmes' celebrated insights concerning law's predictive potential. The book considers important implications of this new understanding for how we individually make moral choices, how we read law, and some of the many other ways that law affects our lives.

This timely collection presents articles written by Chinese and Western authors on law reform in the People's Republic of China from its beginning in 1978 until the present day. The first part presents differing perspectives on the history of law reform. Separate sections are devoted to core institutions: the Constitution, the legislature, administrative law, courts, criminal process, the legal profession, extra-judicial dispute resolution and citizen petitions. Alongside an original introduction the book will be of interest to readers with specialized interests in Chinese law but also to anyone interested in China's governance.

The book also examines the effects of early legal systems.

This book offers a radical challenge to accounts of the common law's development. Contrary to received jurisprudential wisdom, it maintains there is no grand theory which will explain satisfactorily the dynamic interactions of change and stability in the common law's history. Offering original readings of Charles Darwin's and Hans-Georg Gadamer's works, the book shows that law is a rhetorical activity that can only be properly appreciated in its historical and political context; tradition and transformation are locked in a mutually reinforcing but thoroughly contingent embrace. In contrast to the dewy-eyed offerings of much contemporary work, it demonstrates that, like life, law is an organic process (i.e., events are the products of functional and localized causes) rather than a miraculous one (i.e., events are the result of some grand plan or intervention). In short, common law is a perpetual work-in-progress - evanescent, dynamic, messy, productive, tantalising, and bottom-up.