Gregory S. Alexander | Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.4

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Gregory S. Alexander | Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Legal Systems in Conflict: Property and Sovereignty in Missouri, 1750–1860. By Stuart Banner. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000. xiv, 206 pp. $39.95, ISBN 0-8061-3182-9.)

American legal historians have begun filling a large gap in the legal histories of local places. A superb example of this new genre is Stuart Banner's Legal Systems in Conflict. Banner has written a fascinating book that should appeal to anyone interested in the legal development of the frontier during the early republic. 1

Banner's book discusses the legal development of Missouri, or "upper Louisiana," as it was known, during its colonial and early American periods. He weaves together two stories, one concerning the tensions between different legal cultures, the other concerning changes in the forms of land ownership. The story of conflicting legal cultures discusses the simultaneous existence of French and Spanish legal practices in colonial Missouri and the transition from the French-Spanish legal culture to the American legal culture after the Louisiana Purchase. 2

Colonial Missouri combined French population with Spanish rule. As Banner explains, Spanish sovereignty did not always translate into Spanish legal practices. Spanish officials permitted many French legal practices to remain. The most important of those was communal land ownership. Banner's interesting explanation is that 3

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