Two Forms of Conservatism

"The latest book by renowned legal historian William Nelson is about American judicial conservatism during the closing decades of the nineteenth century and the opening decades of the twentieth. It examines the subject, however, not by studying all jurisdictions but by focusing in detail on the work of judges in a single jurisdiction-New York-together with a glimpse at the work product of United States Supreme Court justices. Nelson's book challenges the received wisdom that conservative judges, along with much of the legal profession in the decades from 1860 to 1920, were on the side of big business and the rich. He finds another form of conservative jurisprudence on display in New York, where conservative judges reached decisions that were forward-looking and progressive in character with respect to business doctrine"--