Turning the Tables on Legal History: Parker's Common Law,History, and Democracy in America

Parker's Common Law, History, and Democracy in America joins an ongoing effort to turn the tables on “law and …” by replacing the familiar question “What can history, sociology, and cultural studies tell us about law?” with a new line of inquiry asking “What can law teach us about the reach and limits of disciplinary thinking?” In his study of the reception of common law into nineteenth‐century American jurisprudence, Parker unearths a notion of time based on stability and repetition that challenges the dominant modernist and historicist approach to the writing of law and history. Parker, however, shies away from drawing the full implications of this move and it remains unclear whether, in the final analysis, he escapes the spell of legal historicism.