1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910821212703321

Autore

Hoffer Peter Charles

Titolo

The clamor of lawyers : the American Revolution and crisis in the legal profession / / Peter Charles Hoffer and Williamjames Hull Hoffer

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Ithaca : , : Cornell University Press, , [2018]

©2018

ISBN

1-5017-2608-0

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (199 pages)

Collana

Cornell scholarship online

Disciplina

973.31

Soggetti

Lawyers - United States - History - 18th century

War - Causes

United States History Revolution, 1775-1783 Causes

United States Politics and government 1775-1783

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Previously issued in print: 2018.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction: A Lawyers' Revolution -- Chapter 1. "The Worst Instrument of Arbitrary Power" -- Chapter 2. "The Alienation of the Affection of the Colonies" -- Chapter 3. "My Dear Countrymen Rouse Yourselves" -- Chapter 4. "A Right Which Nature Has Given to All Men" -- Chapter 5. "That These Colonies Are . . . Free and Independent States" -- Conclusion: The Legacy of the Lawyers' American Revolution -- Notes -- A Note on Sources -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

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.