Expansion, Transformation, and the Release of Energy
The newly independent empire of the United States in its explosive,
expansionist phase was organized by law built around what Willard
Hurst called "the release of energy principle." In this section of
the course we consider that regime and its effects.
Readings
Assigned
From the Notebooks of Judge Thomas Rodney of the Mississippi Territory
Suggested
Law and the Conditions of Freedom in the Nineteenth-Century United States (Wisconsin Press 1956)
Morton J. Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860 (Harvard 1977):
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Notes and Materials
Projects