Abstract
This essay is an attempt to uncover and reconstruct 19th-century legal notions of “public economy” and the “well-ordered market.” Through an analysis of 19th-century product and inspection laws, licensing cases and regulations, and public controls on the urban marketplace, the author argues that economic regulation was deeply rooted in American life and law throughout the pre-Civil War era. The pervasiveness of these regulations and accompanying legal rationales steeped in a vision of a “well-regulated society” call into question historical descriptions of this period as the golden age of market capitalism and possessive individualism Law's preeminent role in the construction of public economy also suggests the need to revise our inherited picture of antebellum law as pragmatic, instrumental, and wedded to classical conceptions of property, contract, and the market.
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