David M. Rabban

• JD
• University of Texas at Austin

Robert Gordon became the pioneering scholar of the history and historiography of American law with the publication of his first essays in the 1970s. His research and teaching have stimulated and guided the dramatic growth of American scholarship in legal history during the past four decades, much of it written by his own students and the many other...

Roscoe Pound, widely viewed by his contemporaries and subsequent scholars as the most important American legal thinker during the first decades of the twentieth century, was by far the leading proponent of the “critique social et critique sociologique du droit aux Etats-Unis.” This article stresses the extent to which Pound relied on German and Fre...

German legal scholarship had an enormous impact in the United States from the Civil War until World War I. During the last three decades of the nineteenth century, American legal scholars in all specialties relied heavily, though not uncritically, on the historical analysis of law developed by Friedrich Karl von Savigny in the early nineteenth cent...

German legal scholarship had an enormous impact in the United States from the Civil War until World War I. During the last three decades of the nineteenth century, American legal scholars in all specialties relied heavily, though not uncritically, on the historical analysis of law developed by Friedrich Karl von Savigny in the early nineteenth cent...

Drawing together leading legal historians from a range of jurisdictions and cultures, this collection of essays addresses the fundamental methodological underpinning of legal history research. Via a broad chronological span and a wide range of topics, the contributors explore the approaches, methods and sources that together form the basis of their...

Melville Madison Bigelow, together with Henry Adams, James Barr Ames, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and James Bradley Thayer, introduced the professional study of legal history to the United States in the decades following the Civil War. Emulating German standards of “scientific” historical research based on primary sources, and often relying on prio...

This is a study of the central role of history in late-nineteenth century American legal thought. In the decades following the Civil War, the founding generation of professional legal scholars in the United States drew from the evolutionary social thought that pervaded Western intellectual life on both sides of the Atlantic. Their historical analys...

This is the second book symposium of the first issue of The Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies. The symposium consists of a discussion of David Rabban’s forthcoming "Law’s History: Late Nineteenth-Century American Legal Scholarship and the Transatlantic Turn to History". It includes critical comments by Dr. Adam Hofri-Winogradow, Prof. Ron Harris, P...

This is David M. Rabban’s reply to the scholars' comments in the symposium on his forthcoming book, LAW’S HISTORY: LATE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN LEGAL SCHOLARSHIP AND THE TRANSATLANTIC TURN TO HISTORY, in the first issue of The Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies (pp. 72-136). The issue includes the following critical comments: • Adam S. Hofri-Win...

A small group of largely overlooked American scholars linked the two great English legal historians, Henry Maine and Frederic Maitland. Ancient Law, published by Maine in 1861, and The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I, published by Frederick Pollock and Maitland in 1895 and written primarily by Maitland, are probably the two most...

Although the treatment of history in late nineteenth-century American legal scholarship remains largely unexplored, two recent areas of research have discussed this subject tangentially. Historiographical critiques of the emphasis on doctrine by American legal historians typically maintain that late nineteenth-century legal scholars viewed history...

Ten years after publication of the first edition of Timothy Shiell's path breaking study, restrictions on faculty and student speech on college campuses continue to be hotly contested in the mainstream media, on the internet, in the journals of academic disciplines, in courtrooms, classrooms, and chat rooms. This revised edition adds substantial ne...

The sphere of academic freedom is not equivalent to that of freedom of expression, but derives from and is limited to faculty professional responsibilities, including participation in academic governance.

This study examines over 100 collective bargaining agreements, covering a wide range of professions and organizations, to assess the continuing fundamental debate over the compatibility of unionization with professionalism. The author finds that some contractual provisions affecting professional standards, participation in organizational decision-m...