Of "good Laws" and "good Men": Law and Society in the Delaware Valley, 1680-1710University of Illinois Press, 1995 - 340 pagina's Of "Good Laws" and "Good Men" reveals how a Quaker minority in the Delaware Valley used the law to its own advantage yet maintained the legitimacy of its rule. William Offutt, Jr., places legal processes at the center of this region's social history. The new societies established there in the late 1600s did not rely on religious conformity, culture, or a simple majority to develop successfully, Offutt maintains. Rather, they succeeded because of the implementation of reforms that gave the expanding population faith in the legitimacy of legal processes introduced by a Quaker elite. Offutt's painstaking investigation of the records of more than 2,000 civil and 1,100 criminal cases in four county courts over a thirty-year period shows that Quakers - the "Good Men" - were disproportionately represented as justices, officers, and jurors in this system of "Good Laws" they had established, and that they fared better than did the rest of the population in dealing with it. |
Inhoudsopgave
The Demography of the Law | 25 |
Litigants and Their Causes | 61 |
Strategies and Outcomes in Civil Litigation | 100 |
Quaker Dispute Processing | 146 |
Accused Deviants and Their Offenses | 182 |
Dispositions of the Deviant | 219 |
Veelvoorkomende woorden en zinsdelen
1693 Pennsylvania tax accused Albion's Seed arbitration Artisan assessment in pounds attributes authority average Quakers behavior Bucks Courts Burlington Courts cause of action charges Chester Courts Chi-square probability choices civil Colonial Colonial America common law constables contested Crime criminal defendants debt defamation Delaware Valley differences disownment disproportionately disputes docket Dunn economic Farmer-artisan Gloucester Courts Gospel Order grand jury groups guilty in-court Inventoried wealth Jersey Concessions John John Tatham judgment jury trials Keithian land Landowners Law and Society law reform legal elite legal population Legal roles High legal system legitimacy Lesser officer litigants merchants Middletown Monthly Meeting morals non-Quakers nondebt/contract Nonlandowners Nonofficer offenses outcomes parties Peace Bonds Penn Pennsylvania Laws Pennsylvania tax assessment percent percentage plaintiffs procedures prosecutions Quaker leaders Quaker meetings quote records roles High officer Self-described gentry Servant/slave/laborer social statistically significant status Statutes at Large sued tion uncontested verdicts wealth in pounds West Jersey women