The Clamor of Lawyers - by Peter Charles Hoffer & William James Hull Hoffer (Hardcover)

About the Book

The Clamor of Lawyers explores a series of extended public pronouncements that British North American colonial lawyers crafted between 1761 and 1776. Most, though not all, were composed outside of the courtroom and detached from on-going litigation. While they have been studied as political theory, these writings and speeches are rarely viewed...

Book Synopsis

The Clamor of Lawyers explores a series of extended public pronouncements that British North American colonial lawyers crafted between 1761 and 1776. Most, though not all, were composed outside of the courtroom and detached from on-going litigation. While they have been studied as political theory, these writings and speeches are rarely viewed as the work of active lawyers, despite the fact that key protagonists in the story of American independence were members of the bar with extensive practices. The American Revolution was, in fact, a lawyers' revolution.

Peter Charles Hoffer and Williamjames Hull Hoffer broaden our understanding of the role that lawyers played in framing and resolving the British imperial crisis. The revolutionary lawyers, including John Adams's idol James Otis, Jr., Pennsylvania's John Dickinson, and Virginians Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, along with Adams and others, deployed the skills of their profession to further the public welfare in challenging times. They were the framers of the American Revolution and the governments that followed. Loyalist lawyers and lawyers for the crown also participated in this public discourse, but because they lost out in the end, their arguments are often slighted or ignored in popular accounts. This division within the colonial legal profession is central to understanding the American Republic that resulted from the Revolution.

Review Quotes

The Clamor of Lawyers brings the Revolution to life through the chronicles of a series of public pronouncements made between 1761 and 1782.... Efficient and entertaining, the authors' telling of the American Revolution breathes life into the interaction between loyalist and revolutionary lawyers whose public discourse has served as the foundation of American governance.

-- "Harvard Law Review"

A slim but elegant volume.... There is surely a lesson for the legal community in this volume's reflection on the revolutionary role of legal argumentation in the country's founding.

-- "Law360"

In The Clamor of Lawyers, Peter and Williamjames Hoffer - father and son legal historians - examine a series of public writings and speeches made by colonial lawyers in the years 1761 to 1782.

-- "Comparative Legal History"

Looking at arguments of lawyers throughout the period, Hoffer and Hoffer contend that the American Revolution was a lawyer's revolution.... The book ends with a good set of notes and a detailed source listing, which will... make it useful for libraries.

-- "Choice"

This is an important and welcome contribution to our understanding of the revolutionary period and how arguments were shaped and reshaped by those trained in the law.

-- "The Journal of American History"

About the Author

Peter Charles Hoffer has taught early American history at Ohio State University, the University of Notre Dame, and Georgia, the latter since 1978. He is the author of John Quincy Adams and the Gag Rule, 1835-1850. Williamjames Hull Hoffer was a Henry Rutgers scholar at Rutgers University in New Brunswick before he entered law school, receiving both his J.D. and Ph.D. He now teaches at Seton Hall University. He is co-author of The Federal Courts: An Essential History.