Prepared for the Florida Supreme Court Historical Society.

The verdicts have made headlines, but little is known about the inner workings of the court in which they were delivered. In Fifty Years of Justice, James Denham presents the fascinating history of the U.S. Middle District Court of Florida from its founding in 1962 to the present. Readers will discover the intricacies of rulings, the criminal defendants and civil litigants, and the dedicated officials—the unsung heroes—who keep the justice system running day to day. From desegregation to discrimination, espionage to the environment, trafficking to terrorism, and a host of cases in between, litigation in these courtrooms has shaped and shaken both state and nation.

In 1840, twenty-three-year-old George Long Brown migrated from New Hampshire to north Florida, a region just emerging from the devastating effects of the Second Seminole War. This volume presents over seventy of Brown’s previously unpublished letters to illuminate day-to-day life in pre–Civil War Florida. Brown’s personal and business correspondence narrates his daily activities and his views on politics, labor practices, slavery, fundamentalist religion, and local gossip. Having founded a successful mercantile establishment in Newnansville, Brown traveled the region as far as Savannah and Charleston, purchasing goods from plantations and strengthening social and economic ties in two of the region’s most developed cities. In the decade leading up to the Civil War, Brown married into one of the largest slaveholding families in the area and became involved in the slave trade. He also bartered with locals and mingled with the judges, lawyers, and politicians of Alachua County. The Letters of George Long Brown provides an important eyewitness view of north Florida’s transformation from a subsistence and herding community to a market economy based on cotton, timber, and other crops, showing that these changes came about in part due to an increased reliance on slavery. Brown’s letters offer the first social and economic history of one of the most important yet little-known frontiers in the antebellum South. A volume in the series Contested Boundaries, edited by Gene Allen Smith

Amid controversies surrounding the team mascot and brand of the Washington Redskins in the National Football League and the use of mascots by K–12 schools, Americans demonstrate an expanding sensitivity to the pejorative use of references to Native Americans by sports organizations at all levels. In Indian Spectacle, Jennifer Guiliano exposes the anxiety of American middle-class masculinity in relation to the growing commercialization of collegiate sports and the indiscriminate use of Indian identity as mascots. Indian Spectacle explores the ways in which white, middle-class Americans have consumed narratives of masculinity, race, and collegiate athletics through the lens of Indian-themed athletic identities, mascots, and music. Drawing on a cross-section of American institutions of higher education, Guiliano investigates the role of sports mascots in the big business of twentieth-century American college football in order to connect mascotry to expressions of community identity, individual belonging, stereotyped imagery, and cultural hegemony. Against a backdrop of the current level of the commercialization of collegiate sports—where the collective revenue of the fifteen highest grossing teams in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has well surpassed one billion dollars—Guiliano recounts the history of the creation and spread of mascots and university identities as something bound up in the spectacle of halftime performance, the growth of collegiate competition, the influence of mass media, and how athletes, coaches, band members, spectators, university alumni, faculty, and administrators, artists, writers, and members of local communities all have contributed to the dissemination of ideas of Indianness that is rarely rooted in native people’s actual lives.

Explore the controversial legal history of the formation of the United States Prestatehood Legal Materials is your one-stop guide to the history and development of law in the U.S. and the change from territory to statehood. Unprecedented in its coverage of territorial government, this book identifies a wide range of available resources from each state to reveal the underlying legal principles that helped form the United States. In this unique publication, a state expert compiles each chapter using his or her own style, culminating in a diverse sourcebook that is interesting as well as informative. In Prestatehood Legal Materials, you will find bibliographies, references, and discussion on a varied list of source materials, including: state codes drafted by Congress county, state, and national archives journals and digests state and federal reports, citations, surveys, and studies books, manuscripts, papers, speeches, and theses town and city records and documents Web sites to help your search for more information and more Prestatehood Legal Materials provides you with brief overviews of state histories from colonization to acceptance into the United States. In this book, you will see how foreign countries controlled the laws of these territories and how these states eventually broke away to govern themselves. The text also covers the legal issues with Native Americans, inter-state and the Mexico and Canadian borders, and the development of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of state government. This guide focuses on materials that are readily available to historians, political scientists, legal scholars, and researchers. Resources that assist in locating not-so-easily accessible materials are also covered. Special sections focus on the legal resources of colonial New York City and Washington, DC—which is still technically in its prestatehood stage. Due to the enormity of this project, the editor of Prestatehood Legal Materials created a Web page where updates, corrections, additions and more will be posted.

Inspiring and instructive biographies of the 100 most influential judges from state and federal courts in one easy-to-access volume. Great American Judges profiles 100 outstanding judges and justices in a full sweep of U.S. history. Chosen by lawyers, historians, and political scientists, these men and women laid the foundation of U.S. law. A complement to Great American Lawyers, together these two volumes create a complete picture of our nation's top legal minds from colonial times to today. Following an introduction on the role of judges in American history are A–Z biographical entries portraying this diverse group from extraordinarily different backgrounds. Students and history enthusiasts will appreciate the accomplishments of these role models and the connections between their inspiring lives and their far-reaching legal decisions. William Rehnquist, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and 12 other Supreme Court justices are found alongside federal judges like Skelly Wright, who ordered school desegregation in 1960. Influential state judges such as Rose Elizabeth Bird, California's first woman Supreme Court Chief Justice, are also featured.

NEW FIELD, NEW CORN is an anthology of research papers that explore a range of topics from the rich legal history of the state of Alabama and its influential legal and judicial figures. Contemporary photography and maps are featured as well. “New Field, New Corn presents eight new essays on Alabama legal history from the pre-Civil War era through the Civil Rights era. These elegant and novel chapters survey a broad spectrum, from economics, race, education, and professional concerns of lawyers, to plain old legal doctrine, to show how those variables affected the state’s development. These essays reveal why we need intensive studies of American law at the state and county level in the 19th and 20th centuries. For they demonstrate that law is embedded in our culture. These invite many other studies, from the county level on up, in other states, to demonstrate how law lies at the center of nation’s history. They reaffirm my faith that there are many, many fascinating stories left to tell about our nation’s journey towards fulfilling the promises of law.” — Alfred L. Brophy Judge John J. Parker Distinguished Professor of Law University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill Author, Reparations: Pro and Con (2006) and Reconstructing the Dreamland (2002) “Alabama legal history can be surprising. Usually, this history is identified with dominant one-party politics, slavery, racial segregation, and limited social welfare. University of Alabama Law School legal historian Paul Pruitt’s collection of young lawyers’ research reveals a new field. It extends out from legal subjects, embracing new perceptions of law in society across Alabama history. The collection rests on broad research. Lawyers working in diverse fields have produced Alabama legal history that sets a new standard.” — Tony Freyer University Research Professor of History and Law, Emeritus University of Alabama Author, Hugo L. Black and the Dilemma of American Liberalism (2007), and coauthor, Democracy and Judicial Independence (1996) The volume’s contents include: • Bryan K. Fair’s Foreword: “Critiquing Our Present, Interrogating Our Past” • Paul M. Pruitt, Jr.’s Introduction: “Alabama Legal History as a Field of Study” • Warren Hoffman: “Developments of the Enclosure Movement in Alabama: Disrupting the Free Roaming” • Paul Rand: “Flush Times in the Chancery: A Brief Note on the History of Equity and Trusts” • Helen Eckinger: “The Militarization of the University of Alabama” • Eddie Lowe: “Economic Growth in Blount County/Onteonta: Attorneys, Companies, and Cases” • Mike Dodson: “Pioneers in Alabama Legal History: A Firm Understanding of the History of Alabama” • Courtney Cooper: “A Man in a Boy’s Coat: The Evolution of Alabama’s Constitutions” • Deirdra Drinkard: “The Uniform Beneath the Robe” • Ellie Campbell: “The ‘Breakthrough Verdict’: Strange v. State” A compelling new addition to the Legal History & Biography Series from Quid Pro Books.