Legal and Criminal History
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The historical study of the law looks beyond the citation of precedent and rationalized jurisprudence to consider the fitful and uneven development of this powerful tool for organizing societies and polities in the U.S. and around the world. Historians at Northwestern study the social relations of law and crime in many context; from the colorful figures of early modern banditry to the civil rights movement of postwar America, from the formation of the U.S. state in the 19th century to the transnational reach of Latin American drug cartels in the late 20th century. In all cases we seek to understand how the powerful formalism of the law has altered with social, political, scientific change, and how and why people have turned to the law, time and time again, for some measure of justice.
