Family Law Book

Before reading this book, I probably would have described the change in the law since the founding of the USA as similar to the growth of a tree. It was small when young, and grew up over time, ending with a larger tree. The law just got bigger.

The time around the birth of the United States was one of great change worldwide. The Enlightenment was in full swing, and the shift from agrarianism to industrialization was underway. Before 1780, the common law was derived from "natural law" and custom and in the following decades was faced with pressures from commercialization.

The law, it turns out, wasn't so much a tree that got bigger, a product of nature that grew more or less naturally, being fertilized and pruned as needed. The tree (law derived from "natural law") was systematically replaced with an entirely man-made construct. It didn't grow naturally; it was built with purpose, with a goal (or several goals) in mind.

Horwitz tells us, using many examples, how the law transformed over time, reshaped to the advantage of men of commerce and industry at the expense of farmers, workers, consumers, and other less powerful groups within society. "Not only had the law come to establish legal doctrines that maintained the new distribution of economic and political power, but, wherever it could, it actively promoted a legal redistribution of wealth against the weakest groups in the society."

I'm not a lawyer and at times had to reread sections until I understood what he was getting at. Law is technical and has its own language. In spite of my occasional difficulty, Horwitz, I think, does a fine job of making the material understandable to the lay person.