I am very pleased to introduce Richard Ross, the Legal History Blog's new Guest Blogger. Richard is Professor of Law and History, Thomas M. Mengler Faculty Scholar, and Co-Director of the Program in Legal History at the University of Illinois. He is currently at work on a book on the intellectual history of legal communications in early modern England and early America. He has a number of forthcoming articles: “Puritan Godly Discipline in Comparative Perspective: Legal Pluralism and the Sources of ‘Intensity,’” American Historical Review 113 (in press, October 2008); “The Career of Puritan Jurisprudence,” Law and History Review 26 (in press, summer 2008); and “Legal Communications and Imperial Governance: British North America and Spanish America Compared,” in Cambridge History of Law in America, eds. Christopher L. Tomlins and Michael Grossberg (in press, Cambridge University Press, 2008). His full list of publications is here.Richard is the founder and director of the Symposium on Comparative Early Modern Legal History, which meets under the auspices of the Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry Library (Chicago). The Symposium yearly presents a conference that gathers law professors, historians, and social scientists to explore a particular topic in comparative legal history in the early modern period, broadly defined (c.1492-1815). He is overseas this year, and I hope he will share his insights on European archives. Update: Richard will begin blogging in mid-March.
