Signposts

Reviews / Votes

Constitutional and legal history converge comfortably in this welcome rethinking of the southern legal heritage. Signposts is a milestone in the emergence of a more encompassing vision of the legal and constitutional history of the South. -- William M. Wiecek * author of <i>The Birth of the Modern Constitution: The United States Supreme Court, 1941-\-1953</i> * This collection is truly first rate, offering essays that plow new ground or offer fresh perspectives on more familiar topics. While the individual essays are more than worth the price of admission, together they offer rich insights into the ways law shaped and was shaped by southern society. Hadden and Minter have done an enormous service to the field of legal history by bringing this outstanding group of authors together in a volume that underscores the vitality of southern legal history and sets an ambitious agenda for future scholarship. -- Donald G. Nieman * coeditor of <i>Local Matters: Race, Crime, and Justice in the Nineteenth-Century South</i> * This exciting anthology promises to stir renewed interest in southern legal history, raising new questions, refocusing old lenses, and shaping research agendas for decades to come. -- Anders Walker * author of <i>The Ghost of Jim Crow: How Southern Moderates Used Brown v. Board of Education to Stall Civil Rights</i> * This engaging collection of essays demonstrates just how diverse and lively the field of southern legal history has become. Signposts, from its savvy introduction to its closing essay, reminds us of myriad ways, some familiar and many surprising, that southerners used the law to define themselves and their region. This collection is destined to be a foundation for the next generation of southern legal history. -- W. Fitzhugh Brundage * author of <i>The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory</i> * Professors Hadden and Minter have given us a rich smorgasbord of essays on legal history. . . . Rare would be the person who failed to find something of value from this collection of seventeen essays. -- Walter F. Pratt * <i>Law and Politics Review</i> * [Signposts] explore[s] everything from civil rights, succession, reapportionment, prohibition, legal institutions and their evolution, and more, and they provide much food for thought in social issues areas. The result is a scholarly collection recommended for any library strong in regional American history in general and Southern history and culture in particular. -- <i>Midwest Book Review</i>