Changes

Hurst was essentially arguing that American society and the economic marketplace had shaped the law. Hurst did not believe that you could understand how the law worked in society by only examining the great cases of the past or philosophers such as John Locke, instead you had to examine how society’s needs shaped the law.

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>