The Construction of Citizenship and the Creation of American Common Law in Illinois, 1850–1861

Abstract

In the middle of the nineteenth century, the vocabulary and analytical organization of American common law underwent a profound and far-reaching transformation in a process that began in the northern industrial states around 1850. The language and categories of pleading cases, the burdens of proof, and the standards for the adjudication of cases, all were transformed. This was not merely a matter of revision, it was a reconfiguration of the basic reasoning process that defined the logic of the law. The result was the displacement of the inherited English common- law system, which until that time had undergone only minor modifications. In its place, a unified system of specifically American common law emerged, constructed around a model of American public citizenship that replaced private rights with public duties as its lodestone.