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Gibbons v. Ogden, Law, and Society in the Early Republic. By Thomas H. Cox. (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2009. xviii, 260 pp. Cloth, $44.95, isbn 978-0-8214-1845-1. Paper, $26.95, isbn 978-0-8214-1846-8.)
Famous legal cases, especially constitutional decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, are difficult subjects for historical study. Their importance as legal precedents tends to exert a gravitational pull on the historian toward the normative and profoundly ahistorical interests of the lawyers. At the same time, and unsurprisingly, judicial decisions are often of little importance except for the part they have played in law and politics, so ignoring their legal significance denies much of the reason for interest in them. The subject of this book, Gibbons v. Ogden, plays an important role in contemporary constitutional disputes despite the fact that the high court decided...