Distinguished legal historian Peter Charles Hoffer offers this short book, A Nation of Laws, as a collection of six stand-alone essays, each of which addresses “the larger question of whether we are a nation of laws and whether those laws apply to all of us fairly” (xiv). According to Hoffer, “The argument of this book is that we are a nation of laws, a complex and sometimes perplexing notion” (162). Beyond the law's pervasiveness in American history, Hoffer also see progress, “albeit uneven progress, from legal exclusiveness to inclusiveness and from privilege for a few to dignity for all” (163). These rather general propositions hold together the six essays fairly well.

The prologue begins with the theme of slavery and race. Hoffer explains that both pro- and antislavery, as well as pro- and antisegregationist, views were supported with claims to legality. Because appeals to “the law” could span such wide moral chasms throughout American history, the point of inquiry is not exploring whether we have been a nation of laws, instead “whose laws, written for whom, is the question” (8). Chapter 1, “Contested Categories,” notes “the most striking pattern within categories of law is often their internal contradiction” (10). Hence, Hoffer wonders how Americans' love of law—as exhibited by high rates of litigation—can be squared with the equally prominent phenomenon of Americans taking the law into their own hands. Lynch mobs, vigilantes, and the North Carolina Regulators (and one might add the whole Revolutionary movement) stand as examples. Hoffer's answer is that all these extralegal actions, including extralegal compacts and initiatives outside the legislative process, had “justice” as their end goal.

Skipping the second essay for the moment, chapter 3, “Adversaries and Partisans,” treats us to an examination of categories of legal actors—litigants and jurors, lawyers, legislators, judges, and legal educators. Again, we learn that the real interest is not that the law has been used for very diverse ends by legal adversaries, rather we see how vigorous contestation led to the consideration of multiple viewpoints, which, in turn, led to “improvement in the law” (106). Even though juries were once racially segregated, lawyers advocated racist positions, and law schools operated to counter democratic tendencies, the historical trajectory has been one from exclusiveness to inclusiveness. Thus, more people than ever participate in the legal process today, the legal profession is more diverse and inclusive, and even the nation's lawmakers are not limited by their increasing lack of formal legal education.

Chapters 4 through 6 are structurally similar in that they rely on famous cases to serve as examples of ideal types in essays on “Criminal Law,” “Critical Episodes,” and “Discursive Spaces.” Hoffer sets out four types of criminal cases, using the Salem Witchcraft Trials, and the trials of John Brown, Susan B. Anthony, and John Scopes, as examples that bring “special clarity to the atavistic struggle that is law” (127). The essay on “Critical Episodes” is perhaps the most interesting. Here, Hoffer provides five examples of when formal legal losers turned toward the law, rather than away from it, to rectify the injustice. It is clear from this section that Hoffer's forthcoming work on the Stono Slave Rebellion will prove quite interesting. He gives us a flavor of what we can expect by claiming, “The revolt occurred because everyone involved violated the letter of the law, and that in turn because the law as written was simply not enforceable” (130). Nevertheless, after the rebellion, the white population resorted to statutory revisions to keep the slave population in check. The final chapter on discursive spaces focuses on “occasions when the entire country watched and listened to the conversation over the shape and function of our laws” (146). Examples include Justice Holmes on free speech, FDR's court-packing plan, and the O. J. Simpson trial, among others.

Chapter 2, “Divergent Paths,” merits special mention if only because its purpose and payoff are unclear. In this essay we have three versions of an evolutionary metaphor—“Darwin's own,” “punctuated equilibria,” and Richard Dawkins's variant—to explain legal change in various areas of the law. One would have hoped that Allan Hutchinson had shown the dangers of such endeavors in his work, Evolution and the Common Law (2005), especially the troublesome link between these metaphors and the concept of “progress.” Hoffer does not engage with Hutchinson or with many important historical works that come to mind as one is reading A Nation of Laws. This is largely the result of the nature of the book itself—a set of original interpretive essays rather than an historical monograph.

One unfortunate typographical error occurs in the section on legal educators wherein the text states, “Today there are over 1,200 accredited law schools in America, and over 10,000 law professors” (99). Of course, it should read 200—not 1,200—law schools. In an era when the public believes that lawyers are overproduced, this sort of mistake can only compound that perception, particularly when marketed to a general audience.