Introducing the Future of Legal History: On Re-launching theAmerican Journal of Legal History

Abstract

We are delighted to be part of the re-launch of the American Journal of Legal History as it moves from Temple University, where it has been published since 1957, to Oxford University Press. AJLH , as the journal is affectionately known, has had a distinguished history and its growth parallels the development of the field, which in the 1950s was focused on great (almost exclusively) American men—judges and lawyers, legal doctrine, and the development of the legal profession, to the 21st century when there are many more focal points. The field now stretches from mighty jurists to humble litigants and outsiders, in the United States and beyond. It includes the ideas of those actors, the way that law sets the boundaries for their thoughts and actions, and how they challenge law and custom. Its methods include such classic tools of intellectual history as reported cases and treatises, the quantitative analysis of records of long-forgotten courts and administrative agencies, and the oral recollections of people subject to law’s scrutiny. The journal has been around long enough that we can now turn its content into a subject of study.1 Let us look back for a moment and use the AJLH ’s content as a measure of how far we have come and as a gauge of the changes in legal history from the 1950s to now. Much of legal history writing before the 1950s had been part of a scholarly tradition that told a positive story of the unfolding of American liberty, where there was little conflict between the leaders of American law and society and those left behind. In fact, the complete picture of American legal history was rather different. There were plenty of causes for celebration, to be sure. The AJLH told some of those stories, as well … stefan.vogenauer{at}iecl.ox.ac.uk