On a Case-by-Case Basis: Ethnicity and Los Angeles Courts, 1850-1875

Abstract

In his important study A History of American Law, Lawrence Friedman commented that by 1850, in addition to American emigrants, what traveled west, more important than form, was the general legal culture, the general ways of thinking about law. . . . The notion was: organize or die; and it was the theme of American law, East and West, in the last half of the nineteenth century, in every area and arena of life.1 Friedman also pointed out that, in late antebellum America, [a]t best, criminal justice trembled on the brink of profes sionalism, although he was referring specifically to large Eastern metropolises such as Philadelphia, Boston, and New York.2