Analytical Review of Book Transformation of American Law 1780-1860 by Horwitz

¶ … Transformation of American Law

It is sometimes the movement of the smallest pebble in the field of law that begins the largest avalanche for change. In his book, Transformation of American Law, Horwitz reveals to the reader that change that is needed finds a way to make itself known and can do so through the smallest of legal actions.

The period of the late 1700's and early 1800's was a period that saw many changes in the landscape of the American institutional environment. It was a period that followed the pioneering and settling of the "New World" and a period in which the courts and institutions were attempting to build a solid structure of law in the land. It was the formative years so to speak, a time of trial and error.

The change took place within the economic, political, as well as intellectual arena and even dramatically transformed religion. The shift changed vital matters in the business, social, religious and legal aspects in America.

As Seen by Horwitz:

The work by Horwitz, Transformation of American Law" which; revealed to the reader a formative change or shift in the arena of law during the decade just following the 1776 signing of the U.S. Constitution. Identifying what was specifically described in the mind of Horwitz as he used the word "instrumental" is key in understanding the conveyance of what he wrote. The dictionary makes this definition:

Instrumental: " pertaining to music by instruments"; "useful."

Indeed, the change that was seen within the law was what would be called today some type of "paradigm" shift among new age believers within the way that the law functioned within society in what one could actually term as a "intellectual state of creative social change." The preservation of a society was the factor that in itself provided the momentum to be "instrumental" in the bringing about of a change in the basic structure with terms of that considered "legal" within the structure of society.

Horwitz tells us, and it certainly seems to be true that the straw breaking the back of the camel was Palmer vs. Mulligan, although it was challenged in reference to the watercourses. Later in the year of 1827 Justice Story of Massachusetts called the decision "unjust." In the Mill Acts any owner of a mill could build a dam, permanently flooding the land if the land was non-navigable and further did not need permission to do so from anyone.

The floodings therefore were a type of the taking or establishing of "eminent domain."