Legal Systems in Conflict

Résumé du livre

In this legal history, Stuart Banner focuses on changing conceptions of law and property in Missouri in the decades surrounding the Louisiana Purchase. Banner describes two legal cultures, Anglo-American and French-Spanish, and traces the tensions and compromises occurring between the two cultures during this period of transition. While law under the Spanish government tended to arise from the bottom, with informal, unwritten norms constituting rules of decision, American law tended to flow from the top, in the form of written rules enacted by authorized government officials. The Americans also brought in new notions of property. Before the Louisiana Purchase, the residents of Missouri farmed, grazed their animals, and gathered wood in common fields. Afterwards, these commons were converted into private landholdings.