Thanks to a pointer from Mary Dudziak, I see the the ever-entertaining and ever-insightful Ross Davies has another article in Green Bag. This time it's on the early American law journals, the ones from the time I love so dearly (the antebellum). Davies' abstract reads:
Commercially speaking, law journalism was a risky business in the early Republic. According to Frederick Hicks, of the 30 legal periodicals that went into business before 1850, 24 also went out of business before 1850. And of the six that survived into the second half of the century, five expired by 1866, leaving just one to carry on over the long term. (That one is the Legal Intelligencer of Philadelphia, which is still in operation today.) A simple recitation of Hicks's body count does not, however, reveal the full intensity of the semi-Hobbesian existence of those early journals. A few features of their experience merit a bit more attention. First, the very short lifespans. Second, the total number of failures. Third, the persistence of failure despite enthusiastic support from pillars of the bar. And fourth, the depths of obscurity into which those failed journals have tended to fall.
Of course, lots of periodicals faced challenges in this time, not just law journals. My favorites--the Southern Literary Messenger, Southern Quarterly Review, and Southern Review (to say nothing of the really obscure ones like the Bachelor's Button--faced tough times and were always on the edge of extinction. That's part of the beauty of the life of the mind in the antebellum United States: people published to make a little money, but also because that was how they wanted to make their mark. And that's what's led a lot of intellectual historians to talk about the problems the life of the mind faced, especially in the South. Then again, there's the positive side of the story: there were always more people, willing to try their hand and fortune at these projects. They were also interested in contributing to the culture--much like the obscure thinkers who gave speeches in out-of-the-way places and then published them. Setting up a little life of the mind on the frontier wasn't easy--that's for sure. But it was something that's deep in the American spirit.
North American Review (based in Boston), the American Whig Review, The United States Democratic Magazine, the Southern Literary Messenger, DeBow's Review, and the Southern Quarterly Review all published essays on law. They're another important source to lay along side other exclusively legal publications, like the American Jurist (published by Timothy Walker, the founder of the University of Cincinnati Law School). Funny how all blog posts get back to Paul Caron, isn't it?!
Alfred Brophy
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