Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

1. What Is a Legal System?

2. Law: Formal and Informal

3. The Background of American Law

4. The Structure of American Law: The Courts

5. The Structure of American Law: Statutes and Statute Makers

6. The Structure of American Law: Executing Policy

7. Federalism and American Legal Culture

8. Inside the Black Box: The Substance of Law

9. Crimes and Punishments

10. Constitutional Law and Civil Liberties

11. On Legal Behavior

12. Legal Culture: Legitimacy and Morality

13. The American Legal Profession

14. Law and Social Change

15. Epilogue: The Future of Law in the United States

Notes

Index

About the Author

Lawrence M. Friedman, the Marion Rice Kirkwood Professor of Law at Stanford University School of Law, is an internationally renowned, prize-winning legal historian. He has been the leading expositor of the history of American law to a global audience of lawyers and lay people alike-and a leading figure in the law and society movement. Professor Friedman is particularly well known for treating legal history as a branch of general social history.
From his award-winning History of American Law (1973), to his American Law in the 20th Century (2003), his canonical works have become classic textbooks in legal and undergraduate education. He is also a prolific author
on crime and punishment, and his numerous books on those subjects have been translated into multiple languages.

Grant M. Hayden is Professor of Law at the SMU Dedman School of Law. He has written over twenty law review articles, essays, and book reviews on voting rights, labor law, and corporate law subjects. His articles have been published in the Michigan Law Review, California Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, George Washington Law Review, Fordham Law Review, and the Election Law Journal, among others. In 2008, he
was a Visiting Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School, where he taught Labor Law and Voting Rights Law. He is currently on the editorial board of the Regional Labor Review and serves as a referee for the Election Law Journal, Jurimetrics, and Law & Social Inquiry.

Reviews

"In this compulsively readable book, Friedman and Hayden provide an insightful and occasionally irreverent introduction to law and the legal system. For anyone who wants to understand what law is and how it operates in America, this is a must read." - Chris Guthrie, Dean & John Wade-Kent Syverud, Professor of Law Vanderbilt University Law School
"American Law is a wise and illuminating introduction to the joints and sinews of the American legal system. In a relaxed conversational voice, it delivers a complex and sophisticated view of the workings of our legal order." -- Marc Galanter, Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Wisconsin Law School