| Book Review | Indiana Magazine of History, 103.3

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| Book Review | Indiana Magazine of History, 103.3 | The History Cooperative

Reviews

History of Indiana Law

By David J. Bodenhamer and Hon. Randall T. Shepard

(Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006. Pp. xi, 391. Appendix, index. $49.95.)

On a snowy January day, I read this collection of essays on Indiana law from cover to cover. Written by two judges of the Indiana Court of Appeals, one member of the Indiana Supreme Court staff, one federal district judge, six professors (three of them historians), and six practicing attorneys, the articles provide broad overviews of major topics in legal history (civil liberties, crime, family law, women's rights, race, and courts) as well as some less expected topics such as poor law and education. The volume also includes a section on the Indiana bench and bar and an appendix entitled "History of Official Indiana Statutes," a gem of an essay by the Indiana Legislative Council never mentioned in the text but very useful to all who cite Indiana statutes.

Readers of this journal will have seen the "teaser" article, "Indiana's Legal History," by editors Bodenhamer (a professor of history at IUPUI) and Shepard (Chief Justice of the Indiana Supreme Court) in the December 2005 IMH. That article, like the revised version of it that serves as the book's introduction, deals well, albeit briefly, with the broad strokes of law and economics not addressed elsewhere in the book. The introduction also establishes the theme of "narrative and counter-narrative" in Indiana legal history, a theme that the editors see as being at times in step with and at other times isolated from national legal culture. Several essays adopt this thematic style; other chapters are narrative; and two, filled with bulleted paragraphs and ubiquitous acronyms, consist largely of policy analysis.

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