<DIV>In the aftermath of the Civil War, legislators in the Nebraska<BR> Territory grappled with the responsibility of forming a state government<BR> as well as with the larger issues of reconstructing the Union, protecting<BR> civil rights, and redefining federal-state relations. In the years that followed,<BR> Nebraskans coped with regional and national economic collapses. Nebraska<BR> women struggled for full recognition in the legal profession. Meyer v. Nebraska,<BR> a case involving a teacher in a one-room rural Nebraska schoolhouse, changed<BR> the course of American constitutional doctrine and remains one of the cornerstones<BR> of civil liberties law. And Roscoe Pound, a boy from Lincoln, went on to<BR> become one of the nation&rsquo;s great legal philosophers.<BR> Much of Nebraska law reflects mainstream American law, yet Nebraskans have<BR> been open to experiment and innovation. The state revamped the legislative<BR> process by establishing the nation&rsquo;s only unicameral legislature and pioneered<BR> public employment collective bargaining and dispute resolution through its<BR> commission of industrial relations and relaxation of strict separation of powers.<BR> Nebraska holds a prominent position in the field of Native American legal<BR> history, and the state&rsquo;s original inhabitants have been at the center of many<BR> significant developments in federal Indian policy. Nebraska Indian legal history<BR> is replete with stories of failure and success, triumph and heartache, hope and<BR> misery, suffering and hardship.</DIV>