New from the University of Missouri Press:
John Henry Wigmore and the Rules of Evidence: The Hidden Origins of Modern Law (May 2016), by Andrew Porwancher (University of Oklahoma). A description from the Press:
At the dawn of the twentieth century, the United States was reeling from
the effects of rapid urbanization and industrialization. Time-honored
verities proved obsolete, and intellectuals in all fields sought ways to
make sense of an increasingly unfamiliar reality. The legal system in
particular began to buckle under the weight of its anachronism. In the
midst of this crisis, John Henry Wigmore, dean of the Northwestern
University School of Law, single-handedly modernized the jury trial with
his 1904-5 Treatise on evidence, an encyclopedic
work that dominated the conduct of trials. In so doing, he inspired
generations of progressive jurists—among them Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Jr., Benjamin Cardozo, and Felix Frankfurter—to reshape American law to
meet the demands of a new era. Yet Wigmore’s role as a prophet of
modernity has slipped into obscurity. This book provides a radical
reappraisal of his place in the birth of modern legal thought.
A few blurbs:
“[The book] will become the standard work on the subject, and more
than that, will contribute to emerging clarity in the field of early
twentieth-century legal ideas more broadly.”—Noah Feldman
“It
evidences a close reading of Wigmore’s work and extensive work in the
archives at Harvard and Northwestern, bringing to light a good deal of
new material on the connections among important figures in ‘legal
modernism.’”—Robert P. Burns
More information is available here.
