Legal Historians and Social Change

Abstract

Despite their dowdy clothing, diffident manners and general obscurity, legal historians have been heroes of social change, without whom the United States would not have won its independence, the Civil War might not have been fought, and civil rights would never have reached the heirs of oppressed freedmen in the old Confederacy. Legal history gives lawyers and politicians the courage and imagination to upset conventional wisdom and to challenge entrenched legal hierarchies. Without history (in general) and legal history (in particular) dramatic social change would be much more difficult to achieve.