Advance Praise for
"America's Lawyer-Presidents"

"Twenty-five of the United States' forty-three Presidents have been lawyers, and yet their careers as attorneys have tended to receive scant attention when compared to their political lives, even though the training and activity of these men as lawyers often contributed deeply to their views on American institutions. America's Lawyer-Presidents, which is the work of an impressive assembly of respected scholars, is lucid, informative, and highly engaging. The book provides intriguing biographical perspectives on the professional lives of a number of our most influential citizens, and also demonstrates yet again the profound relationship between the development of American law and our democracy." -Scott Turow

"Edited by the director of the American Bar Associations Museum of Law, this volume provides useful essays on each of Americas 25 lawyer presidents, among them Jefferson, both Adamses, Monroe, Lincoln, McKinley, Taft, Wilson, FDR, Nixon and Clinton. Contributors, including such scholars as Paul Finkelman, Lawrence Friedman and Lewis L. Gould, focus on how legal training prepared these men for their tenure as chief executive and influenced their conduct in office. These themes derive quite directly, as Gross writes, from Edmund Burkes view that no other profession is more closely connected with actual life as the law. It concerns the highest of all temporal interests... property, reputation, the peace of all families, liberty, life even, and the very foundations of society. Of course, the law is quite a varied thing. While John Quincy Adams argued great cases involving human rights before the Supreme Court, Lincoln was primarily a business attorney specializing in railroads, while other presidents, like Rutherford B. Hayes and Benjamin Harrison, made their reputations prosecuting and defending headline-grabbing criminal cases. As this profusely illustrated volume demonstrates, each man was unique in what he brought to the law, what he took from the law and the extent to which he allowed his legal training to influence and inform executive policy."-Publishers Weekly

"Biographies of presidents tend to emphasize their political and personal lives, rather than their professional careers. This book, which accompanies a traveling exhibit, a website, and a series of special programs, helps to fill this informational gap. ...This book brims with interesting facts…[it] is best enjoyed by meandering through it at a leisurely pace….It is a welcome addition to the scholar's bookcase and the general reader's coffee table."-Foreword

"Twenty-five of the United States' forty-three presidents have been lawyers, and yet their careers as attorneys have tended to receive scant attention when compared to their political lives, even though the training and activity of these men as lawyers often contributed deeply to their views on American institutions. America's Lawyer-Presidents, which is the work of an impressive assembly of respected scholars, is lucid, informative, and highly engaging. The book provides intriguing biographical perspectives on the professional lives of a number of our most influential citizens, and also demonstrates yet again the profound relationship between the development of American law and our democracy." -Scott Turow
"Edited by the director of the American Bar Association's Museum of Law, this volume provides useful essays on each of America's 25 "lawyer presidents, " among them Jefferson, both Adamses, Monroe, Lincoln, McKinley, Taft, Wilson, FDR, Nixon and Clinton. As this profusely illustrated volume demonstrates, each man was unique in what he brought to the law, what he took from the law and the extent to which he allowed his legal training to influence and inform executive policy." -Publishers Weekly

"Biographies of presidents tend to emphasize their political and personal lives, rather than their professional careers. This book, which accompanies a traveling exhibit, a website, and a series of special programs, helps to fill this informational gap. [T]his is a worthy and insightful appraisal of the relationship between the legal profession and the presidency. It is a welcome addition to the scholar's bookcase and the general reader's coffee table." -Foreword