Morton Horwitz

Morton J. Horwitz ( born 1938 ) is an American lawyer, legal historian and professor at Harvard Law School.

Horwitz earned his bachelor's degree at the City College of New York and his master's degree in 1962 at Harvard University, where he received his doctorate in 1964. In 1967 he received his Bachelor of Laws ( LLB) at Harvard Law School. In 1970 he became associate professor in 1980 and professor. In 1981, he was Charles Warren Professor of American History Law.

He became famous for his influential book The Transformation of American Law, which analyzed the development of law in the United States before the American Civil War from the perspective of class antagonisms and turned out the role of the influence of capitalist -minded entrepreneurs in the development of the legal system. This promoted a laissez -faire attitude of the lowest possible legal regulation of the development of economic forces that served the economic interests of this class primarily. He thus came as he wrote in the preface explicitly in contrast to a consensus school of American historians of law, which determined the representation in the 1950s. The book was awarded the Bancroft Prize.

In the follow-up volume on the period 1870 to 1960, he explained how the out -building in the second half of the 19th century classic, emanating from universal objective principles system of legal interpretation was increasingly criticized and found this particularly Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Roscoe Pound and Karl Llewellyn out in the framework of developing a realistic alternative legal interpretation ( legal realism, Legal Realism ). An incision was any criticism of the judgment Lochner vs.. New York Supreme Court from 1905 in which the Supreme Court a law limiting the working hours of bakers and so on OSH in New York picked up, as it prevented their view, the freedom of the profession, and the realistic school sat down until the time the New Deal through.

In another book he describes in the view of Horwitz in mind the civil rights movement progressive development of case law in the Supreme Court at the time of its chairman Earl Warren ( 1953-1969 ).

Writings

  • The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860, Harvard University Press 1977
  • The Transformation of American Law, 1870-1960: The Crisis of Legal Orthodoxy, Oxford Paperbacks 1992
  • The Warren Court and the Pursuit of Justice, Hill and Wang 1998
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