Wondrous Depths: Judging the Mind in Nineteenth-Century America

Abstract

Susanna L. Blumenthal’sLaw and the Modern Mind: Consciousness and Responsibility in American Legal Culture(2016) is a history of the self in nineteenth-century America. When judges considered a person’s criminal responsibility or civil capacity in court, they created a body of legal and political thought about the self, society, the economy, and American democracy. This essay uses Blumenthal’s book to explore recent work on law and the mind in Britain and North America, and argues that abstract questions about free will, the self, and the mind were part of the everyday jurisprudence of the nineteenth century. Debates about responsibility were also debates about the psychological consequences of capitalism and the borders of personhood and citizenship at a time of rapid economic, political, and social change.