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I agree entirely with the wonderful and lucid introduction to this subject given by Christian Burset.  What I propose to do now is to make some brief observations which build upon the nature of Jim’s scholarship and to then highlight two aspects: (1)  on the importance of judicial biography; and (2) law reporting. 1.  A…

In my office, right by my desk, I have a “go-to shelf.”  This is a small collection of books that I refer to constantly.  Three volumes of Jim’s work are on it: the two volumes of The Mansfield Manuscripts and his book Trial by Jury: The Seventh Amendment and Anglo-American Special Juries.[1] Jim’s written work,…

In his contribution to these essays honoring Jim Oldham, Paul Halliday quoted Jim’s self-deprecating comment that “well, I’m not a real historian, I’m just a lawyer….” We would like to celebrate exactly that lawyerly aspect of Jim’s historical work. For he is not just an historian of juries and judges but also of commercial law…

I welcome the chance to give a brief evaluation of Jim Oldham’s ability as a scholar and to provide an example of what his scholarship has meant in my own work.  I welcome it, first because I have a high opinion of what he has contributed to our understanding of legal history.  His writing on…

I first met Jim Oldham twenty years ago, at a meeting of the ASLH. After I gave a paper, he introduced himself and asked if I might join him and others working on the cases concerning detention at Guantanamo Bay then wending their way through U.S. courts. That introduction changed my intellectual life in ways…