Document Type
Article
Publication Date
9-1-2013
Keywords
history, law, Baltimore
Abstract
For the past decade, we have collaborated in presenting "Legal History Seminar: Leading Maryland Cases" at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. In recent years, the seminar has paid particular attention to legal cases and controversies arising in Baltimore, Maryland - a city rich with historic tumult and beset with urban problems. The 2010 offering considered the city's environmental controversies; the 2011 offering addressed the administration of justice in Baltimore during the Civil War; and the 2012 offering looked at Baltimore in the War of 1812.
While the focus of the seminar has changed from year to year, its aims and pedagogic approach have remained much the same. History and law have a reciprocal relationship. Jurists and lawyers look to history to understand the law; historians look to law to explicate past events. The goal of the seminar is to introduce law students to the use of historical reasoning as an aid in understanding legislation and court cases, and to the use of legal accounts and records as primary sources for historical inquiry.
Publication Citation
53 American Journal of Legal History 454 (2013).
Disciplines
Legal History
Digital Commons Citation
53 American Journal of Legal History 454 (2013).