Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Lee on Frankfurter on Federal Courts

Evan Tsen Lee, Hastings College of the Law, UC San Francisco, has posted Federal Jurisdiction according to Professor Frankfurter, which is forthcoming in the St. Louis University Law Review. Here is the abstract:
The birth of the modern course in "Federal Courts" or "Federal Jurisdiction" is usually traced to the publication in 1953 of Henry Hart and Herbert Wechsler's The Federal Courts and The Federal System. Without depreciating the importance of that volume, this symposium essay examines the intellectual forebear of Hart & Wechsler, which was Cases and Other Authorities on Federal Jurisdiction and Procedure by Felix Frankfurter and Wilber Katz. The essay closes with some suggestions about the organization of the modern course in Federal Courts
On this subject, I can also recommend Edward A. Purcell, Jr.'s “Reconsidering the Frankfurterian Paradigm: Reflections on Histories of Lower Federal Courts.” 24 Law & Social Inquiry 679–750 (1999).