David M Gold Legal History Books sku-52895766 Hardcover

David M Gold’s The Jacksonian Conservatism of Rufus P. Ranney is a hardcover Legal History Books title, SKU sku-52895766. Using public records because Ranney left no private papers and destroyed his correspondence, Gold examines the life and jurisprudence of this Ohio lawyer and politician. Ranney campaigned against corporations but became John D. Rockefeller’s favorite lawyer.

He studied and practiced law with abolitionist Benjamin F. Wade, gained an antislavery reputation and recruited Union troops. As a Democratic gubernatorial candidate, however, he denied Congress’s power to restrict slavery in the territories; during the Civil War and Reconstruction, he condemned Republican policies.

Ranney was a key delegate to Ohio’s second constitutional convention, served twice as an Ohio Supreme Court justice and helped found the Ohio State Bar Association. He advocated equality and limited government as radical Jacksonian Democrats understood them. Gold considers Ranney’s opinions together to show an approach to judicial decision-making beyond the handful of U.S.

Supreme Court cases often discussed in scholarship on Jacksonian jurisprudence. The book examines how Jacksonian principles persisted across the Civil War and how radical antebellum Democrats became Gilded Age conservatives.