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On June 20, 1997, the New York Times obituary for James Willard Hurst described him as the “dean of American Legal Historians.”<ref>Gelder, sec. B, pg. 8, col. 5, <i>New York Times</i>, June 20, 1997.</ref> While few legal historians would have challenged this description of Hurst, it hardly encompassed the full scope of his career. Hurst was a legal historian, a prolific scholar (he wrote seventeen books, numerous journal articles and book reviews), a historical sociologist and a legal education reformer. Hurst was not only the most prominent legal historian of his day, but he had broader goal by attempting to explain how law fit into the fabric of American life. He also founded the “Law and Society” movement which sought to bring a more interdisciplinary approach to American legal education by emphasizing the importance of social sciences. Hurst worked hard throughout his career to reform both legal history and education.

Hurst was not a historian by training. He attended Williams College for his undergraduate work and proceeded to Harvard Law School.<ref>Tomlins, Christopher, “Framing the Field of Law’s Disciplinary Encounters: A Historical Narrative,” <i>Law and Society Review</i>, vol. 34, 2000, p. 956.</ref> When Hurst attended Harvard Law, he became disenchanted with emphasis on the case method and legal formalism as the exclusive way to educate law students.<ref>Ernst, Daniel R., “Willard Hurst and the Administrative State: From Williams to Wisconsin,” <i>Law and History Review</i>, vol. 18, 2000, p. 8.</ref> Hurst believed that the Harvard legal education ignored the vital role of legislation and administration in the law.<ref>Ernst, p. 8.</ref>. Hurst became interested in the work of the Legal Realists (such as Karl Llewellyn) who argued that laws had social origins and that they were not simply the result of legal logic.<ref>Ernst, p. 8-9.</ref> Hurst began to believe that any history of American laws would also have to be a social history of the United States.<ref>Ernst, p. 9.</ref>

Hurst’s legal and historical education continued during a research fellowship with Felix Frankfurter and clerkship with Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis during the mid 1930s.<ref>Tomlinson, p. 956.</ref> By 1937, Hurst began teaching at the University of Wisconsin law school. At the University of Wisconsin, Hurst developed a number working relationships with faculty members in the social sciences. These relationships (along with his extensive knowledge of scholarship in history, sociology and political science) would play an important role in developing his work as a legal historian.

Furthermore, Hurst admits that there were not any important legal cases relating to the Wisconsin timber industry, but instead his study showed how the nineteenth century Wisconsin community was quick to use law as practical means to exploit an important and profitable resource.<ref>Hurst, p. 607-608.</ref> Hurst states that the story of Wisconsin’s lumber industry was of a secondary importance to him and that his primary concern was to show how “the interaction of legal and economic institutions yielded a product relevant to broader social theory.” (Hurst, p. xx.) In order to achieve this goal, Hurst analyzed “the interaction of all the relevant legal agencies (every piece of official paper) surrounding the changes in a given public policy over time.”<ref>Novak, William, “Law, Capitalism, and the Liberal State,” <i>Law and History Review</i>, vol. 18, 2000, p. 114.</ref>

It is Hurst’s study of the Wisconsin timber industry that William Novak cites to support his belief that Hurst was a historical sociologist in the same vein as Marc Bloch, E.P. Thompson, and Immanuel Wallerstein. While their conclusions differ, Novak argues that these historians used an interdisciplinary approach in an attempt to understand the “interrelationship of individual action, large-scale social structures, and fundamental processes of historical change.” <ref>Novak, p. 98.</ref> Novak states that while “Hurst’s historical sociology was so extensive and multifaceted that to some extent it defies compression and concise summary” Hurst sought to connect nineteenth century American law to the broader story of the general social experience.<ref>Novak, p. 100.</ref>