Academic

Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: The Law Volume

By propertyprof

I'm absurdly--and I do mean absurdly--busy with the move and whatnot.  So I hadn't planned on putting up much. 

However, this morning's mail brought a very important and much-anticipated volume, the tenth volume of the New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture--on Law and Politics, published by the University of North Carolina Press.  Jim Ely and Bradley edited it.  These sorts of volumes are absurdly difficult to conceptualize: how can you capture something so sprawling as southern law--to say nothing of politics--in a few hundred pages.  So they're necessarily selective.  But that's the fun it is, isn't it?  Seeing what you can put together--what cast of a few dozen characters can be made to speak for a region and many centuries?  Reminds me of Richard Wightman Fox and James Kloppenberg's fantastic  Companion of American Thought.  Back in the day, it was a great present for almost all occasions.

Of course, it invites comparison with the law section of the Encyclopedia of New England, published a few years back by Yale University Press.

Here is the press' description of the volume:

Volume 10 of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture combines two of the sections from the original edition, adding extensive updates and 53 entirely new articles. In the law section of this volume, 16 longer essays address broad concepts ranging from law schools to family law, from labor relations to school prayer. The 43 topical entries focus on specific legal cases and individuals, including historical legal professionals, parties from landmark cases, and even the fictional character Atticus Finch, highlighting the roles these individuals have played in shaping the identity of the region.

The politics section includes 34 essays on matters such as Reconstruction, social class and politics, and immigration policy. New essays reflect the changing nature of southern politics, away from the one-party system long known as the "solid South" to the lively two-party politics now in play in the region. Seventy shorter topical entries cover individual politicians, political thinkers, and activists who have made significant contributions to the shaping of southern politics.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on May 20, 2008 (boomark / email).