The Clamor of Lawyers: The American Revolution and Crisis in the Legal Profession - Hardcover

Hoffer, Peter Charles; Hoffer, Williamjames Hull

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1501726072 ISBN 13: 9781501726071

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2018

Synopsis

The Clamor of Lawyers explores a series of extended public pronouncements that British North American colonial lawyers crafted between 1761 and 1776. Most, though not all, were composed outside of the courtroom and detached from on-going litigation. While they have been studied as political theory, these writings and speeches are rarely viewed as the work of active lawyers, despite the fact that key protagonists in the story of American independence were members of the bar with extensive practices. The American Revolution was, in fact, a lawyers’ revolution.

Peter Charles Hoffer and Williamjames Hull Hoffer broaden our understanding of the role that lawyers played in framing and resolving the British imperial crisis. The revolutionary lawyers, including John Adams’s idol James Otis, Jr., Pennsylvania’s John Dickinson, and Virginians Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, along with Adams and others, deployed the skills of their profession to further the public welfare in challenging times. They were the framers of the American Revolution and the governments that followed. Loyalist lawyers and lawyers for the crown also participated in this public discourse, but because they lost out in the end, their arguments are often slighted or ignored in popular accounts. This division within the colonial legal profession is central to understanding the American Republic that resulted from the Revolution.

About this title

About the Author:

Peter Charles Hoffer has taught early American history at Ohio State University, the University of Notre Dame, and Georgia, the latter since 1978. He is the author of John Quincy Adams and the Gag Rule, 1835–1850. Williamjames Hull Hoffer was a Henry Rutgers scholar at Rutgers University in New Brunswick before he entered law school, receiving both his J.D. and Ph.D. He now teaches at Seton Hall University. He is co-author of The Federal Courts: An Essential History.

Review:

"Peter Charles Hoffer and Williamjames Hoffer present an intriguing picture of the role of law and the legal profession in the Revolutionary generation. The Clamor of Lawyers is a powerful contribution to our understanding of that generation."

(Lawrence M. Friedman, Professor of Law, Stanford University, and author of A History of American Law)

"The Clamor of Lawyers provides evidence for Tocqueville's bold claim that, as early as the Revolution, lawyers formed America's aristocracy. As lawyers framed the dispute with Britain in terms of rights, law formed a new national discourse and the basis of a nation of laws not men. Entertaining, clear, and succinct, this book from Peter Charles Hoffer and Wiliamjames Hull Hoffer is one I recommend to students, scholars, and general history readers alike."

(Mark McGarvie, Visiting Professor of Law, William & Mary Law School, and author of Law and Religion in American History: Public Virtue and Private Conscience)

"Peter Charles Hoffer and Williamjames Hoffer ably and coherently argue that revolutionary-era lawyers were not just dispute managers or wise thinkers penning pamphlets; they were political leaders and government administrators who had bold ideas in their heads and visions of where they wanted their provinces, alone and together, to go. The Clamor of Lawyers is a rich history and a multidimensional story of the role of law and lawyers in the nation's founding."

(Daniel Hulsebosch, Charles Seligson Professor of Law, New York University, and author of Constituting Empire)

About this edition

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1501726072
• ISBN 13: 9781501726071
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 204