Law and Society— North and South

Abstract

Michael Stephen Hindus. Prison and Plantation: Crime, Justice, and Authority in Massachusetts and South Carolina, 1767-1878. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980.285 + xxviii pp. Paul Finkelman. An Imperfect Union: Slavery Federalism, and Comity. Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 1981.378 + xii pp. These two new works in the University of North Carolina's "Studies in Legal History" series are both excellent examples of the way in which legal history is increasingly breaking away from a narrow professional focus to an aware- ness that legal developments must be seen as part of social and political history. The law evolves partly from its own logic and the dynamics of its own intellectual processes as well as from the compulsions of its professional organization. But it is not hermetically sealed from influences from the rest of society and must in some degree be molded by the intellectual currents, political problems and class conflicts and power of that society. It is the interface—the ways in which society shapes the law and the effects which legal developments in turn have upon society—which is of interest to the general historian. Yet this is a very difficult kind of history to write, since it requires enough expertise to understand the internal, technical determinants of legal decisions and changes, without being so enmeshed in the disciplinary ethos that one can discern only a continuous Whig evolution toward ever increasing rationality and enlightenment.