At a time when the role of the legal profession, the jury system, and other key aspects of American law are under much dispute, Imagining the Law provides a historical perspective on these critical public issues. Historian Norman Cantor explains how and why common law developed out of Roman law, in response to the needs and assumptions of English society and culture from 1000 to 1780, and how it became the basis of the American legal system.

Professor Cantor shows that many of the current debates about the jury trial, the adversarial model, and other parts of our legal system stem from this history. He highlights the minds and personalities of prominent judicial leaders, from Cicero and Justinian in the ancient world, through Glanville and Bracton in the Middle Ages, to Coke, Blackstone, and Bentham in later centuries.

A concluding chapter relates the social and cultural history of common law to the American system of Supreme Court Justices John Marshall and Oliver Wendell Holmes and to the legal profession in the United States today.