Intervention and Detachment: Essays in Legal History and Jurisprudence

This collection of essays by G. Edward White provides, in one place, discussion of a number of the substantive issues of current interest in American legal history and jurisprudence. Ranging through a diverse body of subjects, including doing history (methodology and practice), judicial review, and the politics of jurisprudence, the author both explores important topics and raises critical issues affecting the process of writing legal history. Topics include the nature and process of revisionism in historical writing, the role of lawyers in the New Deal, the roles of evidence and interpretation in legal history, critical theory, the significance of the Supreme Court in American culture, the historiography of the Marshall Court, and the career of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. Written by one of the nation’s preeminent legal historians, Intervention and Detachment skillfully integrates the theoretical and the concrete, offering scholars and students a vital survey of modern American legal history.