| James Coolidge Carter (1827--1905) was the chief representative of the American school of historical jurisprudence, a prominent Supreme Court advocate, an influential municipal reformer, and the leading opponent of David Dudley Fields's campaign to codify the common law. Carter does not conform to the standard portraits of Gilded Age jurists painted by historians. He was not a laissez-faire extremist in the thrall of big business, nor was he a direct intellectual descendant of the antebellum Jacksonians. Furthermore, he did not depict common law judging as an amoral exercise in logical formalism. On the contrary, Carter's jurisprudence was rooted firmly in ethics, although the social and economic developments of the late nineteenth century placed his ethical system under enormous strain.; Carter, like many elite legal figures of his time, belonged to the genteel "Mugwump" political culture of the northeastern cities. This dissertation shows how Carter's jurisprudence reflected his Mugwump world view. It also explores how he, like other Mugwumps, struggled to accommodate older modes of thought to the challenges of modernity. Despite the antilegislative theme of his jurisprudence, Carter increasingly acknowledged the need for positive government in an urban and industrial society. Moreover, he merged a traditional faith in timeless moral principles with a focus on evolving customary norms.; The dissertation then examines the striking contrast between Carter's vision of legal decision making and the highly conceptual and rigidly logical jurisprudence of his contemporary, Christopher Columbus Langdell. Carter, foreshadowing the legal realists, believed common law principles and rules were indeterminate. He depicted the common law as a system that permitted judges to decide each case fairly according to its particular facts.; After analyzing the relationship of Carter's thought to German and English historical jurisprudence, the dissertation explores his career as a practicing attorney. It considers how he attempted to reconcile his Mugwump reformism with his work as a corporate litigator. In addition it demonstrates how his arguments in court reflected his jurisprudential and moral theories. Finally, the dissertation discusses the reception of Carter by twentieth-century legal scholars, who rejected and ultimately ignored him, despite the various ways his thought anticipated their own. |
