Zion in the Courts: A Legal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 1830-1900

Rating:
Summary: An Acceptable, but Flawed Analysis
Review: "Zion in the Courts" is a pretty good analysis of the legal issues affecting the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1830 to 1990. Both authors are fine scholars and bring a wealth of understanding to the subject. In the process they explore the legal history of the often rocky relationships between Mormons and other Americans. They also offer a discussion of internal Mormon legal actions such as ecclesiastical courts and during the pioneer Utah period, adjudication of water rights in the arid territory.

But Edwin Brown Firmage and Richard Collin Mangrum fall sway to the Mormon myth of "persecuted innocence." Indeed, the authors of "Zion in the Courts" fail to move beyond the interpretive framework prearranged to lean in a pro-Latter-day Saint direction. While there may be some room for permutations of interpretation, Latter-day Saint leaders have essentially drawn a line in the sand about what may and may not be considered as an interpretive framework and most historians have accepted it (or perhaps have never even considered going beyond it) because of their religious convictions. Those who have ventured too far, notably D. Michael Quinn and Lavina Fielding Anderson, have been excommunicated from the church.

As a result the authors of "Zion in the Courts," despite the book's other very real qualities, assume without any serious discussion the viability and justification of a Mormon theocracy, i.e., Zion. The authors assert that the zionic goal inevitably led to persecution endured by an innocent church through both legal and extralegal means. They wrote that "The story of the persecution Mormons suffered through the institutions of the legal system, and of their efforts to establish their own legal system--one appropriate to Zion... illustrates democracy's potential to oppress an insular, minority community;..." (p. xiv-xv).

The authors apparently believe that theocracy is both possible and desirable, but such a quest for empire mandates by this perspective would always run against the grain of the American mainstream, and legal institutions by definition would oppose it. Far from democracy's "oppression" of a minority, I would suggest, the nation's legal system would assert itself to defend the cherished principles of the Constitution against a perceived threat to liberty from a theocracy bent on taking control. Debate over whether or not liberty was really threatened by Mormon theocracy is moot, but undoubtedly non-Mormons considered the church's secular power a threat to the Constitution. The authors fail to appreciate the inherent tension between democracy and theocracy. They also seem not to appreciate that there might be other equally valid approaches toward Mormonism's zionic quest. For some it represented a spiritual condition where righteousness and justness were partners with goodwill and charity, a position that eschewed the secular, theocratic aspects that always created ill-will between Mormons and other Americans. Unfortunately, the authors of "Zion in the Courts" did not consider criticisms of Mormonism's quest for empire-- criticisms that were coherent, internally consistent, and deserving of serious consideration. They accept at face value the Mormon dialectic. As a result, "Zion in the Courts" represents both the worst and the best of the recent writing on the Mormon past.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Book
Review: This is the first, and to date the only, book that attempts to tell the 19th century legal history of the Mormon Church. The book is divided into three parts. The first section basically gives the legal history of the church during the life time of its founder Joseph Smith. The second section details the intensive persecution of the church by the federal government over the practice of plural marriage. The third section describes in detail the ecclesiastical court system that basically served all of the judicial needs of pioneer Mormons. This section in particular is fabulous. Firmage and Mangrum had incredible access to confidential church court records and the detail and scope of their treatment dwarfs any other work on the subject.

However the book is not without flaws. There are some gaps in the research. For example, the landmark Reynolds decision is dicussed in detail, but one gets the impression that the only documents consulted were the published legal ones (opinions and briefs). What about journals and letters by the participants? These sorts of gaps abound.

On the whole, however, this is a wonderful work. Law is one of the hitherto neglected regions of Mormon studies, and Mormon perspectives are among the hitherto neglected possibilities of legal studies. Despite a facinating legal history, Mormon historians have done compartively little on the subject. Likewise, despite Mormons at the highest levels of the legal establishment -- e.g., Rex E. Lee (Solicitor General) or Dallin H. Oaks (Dean of Chicago Law School) -- there have been compartatively few attempts at sustained and scholarly Mormon perspectives on the law. Anyone interested in providing such perspectives should read this book.