Josiah M. Daniel III has posted The Affinity of Lawyers and History: The Dallas Bar Association's Legal History Discussion Group as a Case in Point, which appears in the Journal of Texas Supreme Court History:
Legal history may be conceived as the story of the evolution of legal doctrines and rules or as the analysis of the effects of law on society and vice versa. In all events, the irreducible elements of the subject matter of the field of legal history are not only the law but also the lawyer and the judge.
To begin, the lawyer is the quintessential element because what lawyers "do" is to invoke and apply the processes of the law, either in resolving disputes or in effectuating transactions, on behalf of a client. Lawyers are the ones who know or learn what the law is in order to be able to seek to accomplish—ideally with highest ethics, not merely as an agent—the objectives of a client. Such work is known as “lawyering.”
But not only have lawyers always been key actors within the activities and events that are comprehended within the ambit of legal history but today quite a number of them are researchers and authors—legal history scholars—knowledgeable of the literature and interested in learning and creating more in publications and oral presentations. As undergraduates, many attorneys and judges majored or minored in history, but even those who studied business administration or accounting in university are often found reading and discussing legal-historical books and articles. Some even write them.
The scholarly discipline of history has been called "the art of reconstructing the past." The endeavor to do so, known as the historical method, requires, first, finding the sources. Lawyers are experienced in fact finding and determining causation, and engaging in historical research is a natural extension.
This essay argues that the multiple affinities of lawyers and judges for history are demonstrated in the legal history activates of Dallas and Texas lawyers.
--Dan Ernst
