"First printing 2019." "This book is part of a project, now more than twenty-five years old, to examine the history of American states' legal systems. The project has long had a Southern tinge."--Provided by publisher. "Through close research, qualitative analysis, published court decisions, statutes, and law review articles, along with unusual secondary sources including nineteenth-century political and legal journals and journals of state constitutional conventions, Ranney indicates how Mississippi law has both shaped and reflected the state's character and, to a certain extent, how Mississippi's legal evolution compares with that of other states. Ranney examines the interaction of Mississippi law and society during key periods of change including the colonial and territorial eras and the early years of statehood when the legal foundations were laid; the evolution of slavery and slave law in Mississippi; the state's antebellum role as a leader of Jacksonian legal reform; the unfolding of the response to emancipation and wartime devastation during Reconstruction and the early Jim Crow era; Mississippi's legal evolution during the Progressive Era and its legal response to the crisis of the Great Depression; and the legal response to the civil rights revolution of the mid-twentieth century and the cultural revolutions of the late twentieth century. Histories of the law in other states are starting to appear, but there is none for Mississippi. Ranney fills that gap to help us better understand the state as it enters its third century." -- Provided by publisher. Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents:
Preface -- Introduction -- A Refractory and Turbulent Spirit: Origins of Mississippi Law -- Prescribed Spheres: The Legal Path of Slavery in Mississippi -- Flush Times, Hard Times: Law, Jacksonism, and a Cotton Economy -- Legal Legacies of War and Reconstruction -- Thresholds of Change: Mississippi Law in the Progressive and New Deal -- Moving Past the Crossroads: Law and Mississippi's Modern Age -- Notes -- Table of Mississippi Cases -- Selected Bibliography -- Index.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.