Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction
- PART I OVERVIEWS AND ASSESSMENTS OF FRIEDMAN'S WORK
- PART II APPLICATIONS OF CONCEPTS, INSIGHTS, AND METHODS IN FRIEDMAN'S WORK
- PART III THE LEGAL PROFESSION
- PART IV LAW AND LARGE AREAS OF SOCIAL LIFE
- PART V FACTS FROM THE UNDERGROUND: DIGGING LEGAL HISTORY OUT OF THE CELLAR
- 16 Historian in the Cellar
- 17 The Discreet Charm of Inquisitorial Procedure
- 18 “Keep Negroes Out of Most Classes Where There Are a Large Number of Girls”
- 19 Taking Legal Realism Offshore
- PART VI PERSPECTIVES FROM OTHER CONCEPTUAL WORLDS
- Index
- Titles in the series
- References
16 - Historian in the Cellar
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 October 2011
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction
- PART I OVERVIEWS AND ASSESSMENTS OF FRIEDMAN'S WORK
- PART II APPLICATIONS OF CONCEPTS, INSIGHTS, AND METHODS IN FRIEDMAN'S WORK
- PART III THE LEGAL PROFESSION
- PART IV LAW AND LARGE AREAS OF SOCIAL LIFE
- PART V FACTS FROM THE UNDERGROUND: DIGGING LEGAL HISTORY OUT OF THE CELLAR
- 16 Historian in the Cellar
- 17 The Discreet Charm of Inquisitorial Procedure
- 18 “Keep Negroes Out of Most Classes Where There Are a Large Number of Girls”
- 19 Taking Legal Realism Offshore
- PART VI PERSPECTIVES FROM OTHER CONCEPTUAL WORLDS
- Index
- Titles in the series
- References
Summary
HISTORY FROM THE BOTTOM
Get out of the light, Lawrence Friedman has told legions of legal historians – and go down to the cellar. Upstairs you will find only the history of appellate law. There, in floodlit reading rooms, celestial metaphors take flight – those judicial luminaries and penumbral rights, that omnipresence in the sky. Yet the law of society – the law as we live it – is not the work of common law judges or even elected lawmakers, who leave their tracks above ground. It is instead the shadow of that law, cast across the streets and shops and tenements of town. The stuff of the law, and especially the criminal law, concerns those dredged up from the bottom of society. And they leave their tracks in the cellar.
So down he went. Three decades ago Lawrence Friedman and his student Robert Percival followed those tracks to the basements of Oakland. In that grubby port town, squatting across San Francisco Bay from its shimmering big sister, they started to dig. From precinct to courthouse to prison to press, they unearthed the shards of a whole system of criminal justice. Then they rebuilt it in living detail – the entire anatomy of crime detection and punishment in Alameda County between 1870 and 1910. They called their work The Roots of Justice – for it was in every sense a history from the bottom.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Law, Society, and HistoryThemes in the Legal Sociology and Legal History of Lawrence M. Friedman, pp. 273 - 292Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
References
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Oakland Tribune, “At the County Jail” (Sept. 19, 1885): 4.
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Eslinger v. Eslinger, 47 Cal. 62 (1873).
Haley v. Haley, 67 Cal. 24 (1885).
Powelson v. Powelson, 22 Cal. 359 (1863).
State v. Sibley, 131 Mo. 519 (1895).
Act of March 12, 1870, ch. 188, 1869–70, Calif. Stat.: 291.
California Civil Code (1885): Chapter 2 (Divorce)
California Civil Procedure Code (1883): Chapter 2 (Witnesses).
California Penal Code (1885): Chapter 2 (Who May Be Witnesses in Criminal Actions)
(2008). Livermore's Historic Legacy to Be Displayed, 39 (3) Livermore Heritage Guild1.Google Scholar
(2000). A Dead Language: Divorce Law and Practice before No-Fault, 86 Va. L. Rev. 1497.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. (2004). Private Lives: Families, Individuals, and the Law. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
and (1976). Who Sues for Divorce? From Fault through Fiction to Freedom, 5 J.Legal Stud. 61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and . (1981). The Roots of Justice: Crime and Punishment in Alameda County, California 1870–1910. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
(1982). Family and Divorce in California, 1850–1890. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
. (1986a). The Evolution of the Doctrine of Mental Cruelty in Victorian American Divorce, 1890–1900, 20 J. Soc. Hist. 127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. (1986b). Law, Sex, Cruelty, and Divorce in Victorian America, 1840–1900, 38 Am. Q. 721.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
, ed. (1901). History of the Bench and Bar of California. Los Angeles: Commercial Printing House.Google Scholar
Alameda Argus (Oct. 10, 1885): 2.
Oakland Tribune, “A Livermore Thug” (Sept. 14, 1885): 3.
Oakland Tribune, “The Livermore Horror” (Sept. 15, 1885): 3.
Oakland Tribune, “He Wants to Die” (Sept. 18, 1885): 3.
Oakland Tribune, “At the County Jail” (Sept. 19, 1885): 4.
Oakland Tribune, “Cull's Examination” (Sept. 28, 1885): 3.
Oakland Tribune, “Cull on Trial” (Aug. 10, 1886): 3.
Oakland Tribune, “Crazed by Love” (Aug. 11, 1886): 3.
Oakland Tribune, “The County: Livermore” (Sept. 3, 1886): 1.
San Francisco Morning Call, “Strangled to Death” (Sept. 15, 1885): 1.
San Francisco Morning Call, “Oakland News” (Aug. 12, 1886): 3.
San Francisco Chronicle, “Acquitted of Murder” (Aug. 12, 1886): 8.
San Francisco Daily Examiner, “A Farmer in Alameda County Murders His Wife” (Sept. 15, 1885): 2.
San Francisco Daily Examiner, “Oakland Items” (Aug. 12, 1886): 2.
People v. Bernal, 10 Cal. 66 (1858).
People v. H. C. Cull (Alameda County Superior Court, 1885, No. 634) (Trial Record & Transcript); People v. H. C. Cull (Murray Township Justice's Court, 1885, No. 1399) (Preliminary Hearing Transcript).
Eslinger v. Eslinger, 47 Cal. 62 (1873).
Haley v. Haley, 67 Cal. 24 (1885).
Powelson v. Powelson, 22 Cal. 359 (1863).
State v. Sibley, 131 Mo. 519 (1895).
Act of March 12, 1870, ch. 188, 1869–70, Calif. Stat.: 291.
California Civil Code (1885): Chapter 2 (Divorce)
California Civil Procedure Code (1883): Chapter 2 (Witnesses).
California Penal Code (1885): Chapter 2 (Who May Be Witnesses in Criminal Actions)