Legal History "Comps"

A friend recently asked me to revisit my “exam lists,” compilations of readings in specialized fields that I used to prepare for one of the major hurdles of the Ph.D. process, the comprehensive exams. This friend was compiling her legal history list and wanted to know how I put mine together. Looking back, the list seems to break down into three categories: legal history “classics” (e.g., Morton Horwitz’s 2-volume The Transformation of American Law); important books that cover themes, topics, or time periods that I also traverse; and books that are directly relevant to my dissertation.

But there are a handful of books and articles that I read for different reasons and that I’ve returned to often. These are sources that blend theory and method. They raise questions that all legal historians should grapple with; they explore the different vantage points from which to view legal historical sources; and they interrogate what it means, ultimately, to do legal history. My list includes:

• Hendrik Hartog, “Pigs and Positivism” (and the short piece on “Legal Histories from Below” that introduced it) (both from Wisconsin Law Review (1985)).

• Robert Gordon, “Critical Legal Histories” (Stanford Law Review (1984)).

• Michael Grossberg, “Social History Update: ‘Fighting Faiths’ and the Challenges of Legal History” (Journal of Social History (1991)).

• William Fisher III, "Texts and Contexts: The Application to American Legal History of the Methodologies of Intellectual History" (Stanford Law Review (1997)).
  

What would you all suggest to legal history graduate students?

Image credit: pigs