| Judicial Institute of Maryland-Maryland Legal History Series, Part Two: The Revolutionary Generation (1765-1820)
For the Syllabus and reading material go to the web site, where you will need a user name: judge and a password: judge!.
This course will investigate the history of Maryland law and Maryland courts in the era of the American Revolution. Emphasis will be placed on the judicial implications of writing a State Constitution and its aftermath, encompassing the writing of the first State Constitution to the amendments adopting universal white manhood suffrage. Reading and discussion will focus on the historical context of constitution writing and its consequences as implemented and interpreted by the Maryland Courts prior to 1810. Particular attention will be paid to the people, the ideas, and the structure of the court system designed to implement and interpret Maryland law in the light of what the Constitution makers in 1776 and the legislature thereafter seemed to intend, and what English precedent seemed to demand. Unlike its neighbor Virginia, Maryland did not attempt to completely abandon its English statutory roots. Participants will be introduced to the resources for the study of Maryland legal history at the Maryland State Archives and on the web.
Reading for the course consists of an introduction to the orgins of Maryland's web-based resources on the Maryland Constitution and :
1) selected chapters from Morris Radoff, The Old Line State, 1971. (distributed free to participants). Please read Chapter III by Philip Crowl, and Chapter XVIII by Gust Skordas
2) Two document packets available on the web, Hesitant Revolutionaries and Writing it All Down. Please read the hyperlinked secondary sources and the documents. You will need a user name: aaco, and a password: aaco# to access some of the material.
3) web resources devoted to the examining the history of the amendments to the First State Constitution and their framers. See also the Archives of Maryland on Line volume devoted to amendments to the Maryland Constitution to the present.
4) a draft article by Dan Friedman on the class web site entitled "Tracing the Lineage: Textual and Conceptual Similarities in The Revolutionary-Era State Declaration of Rights of Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware," draft as of 4/4/2002, not to be quoted or reproduced without the author's permission.
5) William Kilty on the applicability of English Statutes to Maryland Law, available from the class web site
6) Mahoney
vs. Ashton, 4 H. & McH. 295; 1799 Md. Lexis 8, along with an
article
on the case by Eric Papenfuse in Slavery and Abolition, vol 15,
no. 3, 1994, pp. 38-62., plus the documents and secondary materials relating to the issue of slavery. |
