The American Legal History Podcast

About The American Legal History Podcast

This podcast will trace the history and evolution of American law from its most ancient roots, through the birth of the common law in medieval England, early colonial and revolutionary American, through the early days of the supreme court, the civil war, through the tumultuous twentieth century and on to the present day. Although legal theory and philosophy will be discussed this is a not a podcast on jurisprudence. The entire podcast will have about 60 installments, each one about thirty minutes in length.

Publisher

Timothy J. Innes

Category

history

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

11 Nov 2019

Latest episode

18 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

4 of 39 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   18 Sept 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Episode Thirty-Eight: American Law in the Gilded Age, Part I

   Host Louis J. Sirico Jr. explores Gilded Age American law, examining corporations, worker and farmer struggles, and the Supreme Court's reinterpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment in this interview.

2. 

   1 Aug 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Episode Thirty-Seven: Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights, Part II

   Host [Host Name] interviews Professor Dylan C. Penningroth, author of "Before the Movement," exploring Black civil rights in the 1860s and their surprising relationship with Southern courts.

3. 

   28 Jun 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Episode Thirty-Six: Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights, Part I

   Host [Host Name] interviews Professor Dylan C. Penningroth about how formerly enslaved African Americans built a legal culture of everyday rights before the Civil Rights Movement.

Inside a recent episode

Episode Thirty-Eight: American Law in the Gilded Age, Part I

Published 18 Sept 2026 · Transcript excerpt

[…] At its core was the belief that law was a science, just as surely as algebra or geology. And like all hard sciences, the answer to all your questions are already out there and only need to be discovered by a trained professional. If you were a judge, you could discover it in natural law, sacred traditions, and most importantly, precedent. The idea was to find, or rather discover, the one right pre-existing conclusion to all legal questions, one only discoverable by a trained judge and not influenced by politics. This mode of thought gave rise to a very formalistic form of opinion writing that considered legal precedent as almost infallible. it was overwhelmingly concerned with legal categories or categorical legal thinking by clear, bright-line distinctions of legal phenomena. […]

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.5 / 5

39 ratings

Spotify

4.7 / 5

9 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 41 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

48

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

84

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Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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