Presented by Willard Hurst as part of his course "Introduction to Modern American Legal History" at the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1978. The correlation between the 1647 English debates and the 1787 Philadelphia Convention is further emphasized as Hurst discusses the factors behind the creation of the federal constitution. The social significance of the market, contracts, and freehold titles is described and linked to later societal trends such as Jacksonian democracy, freedom of contract, the Civil War Amendments, the 1877 railroad strikes, and the 1934 Wagner Act. America's political state is described as a service industry as Hurst begins to enumerate the moral and political entitlements it grants to the public. This concept is further explained through an in-depth examination of the service and political functions of a public supported education system and the long-term implications of this trend are evidenced through the existence of modern public service curriculums. The relationship between these types of civil liberties and social stability are then lined to the marginal nature of America's legal order.
