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Blackstone and His Critics

Blackstone and His Critics

Author: Anthony Page; Wilfrid Prest
Publisher: Hart Publishing
ISBN: 9781509910458

Published In: April 2018
Format: Hardback
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only
Paperback Edition ISBN: 9781509940295

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William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69) is perhaps the most elegant and influential legal text in the history of the common law - by one estimate, Blackstone has been cited well over 10,000 times in American judicial opinions alone.

Prominent in recent reassessment of Blackstone and his works, Wilfrid Prest also convened the Adelaide symposia which have now generated two collections of essays: Blackstone and his Commentaries: Biography, Law, History (2009), and Re-Interpreting Blackstone's Commentaries: A Seminal Text in National and International Contexts (2009).

This third essay collection focuses on Blackstone's critics and detractors. Leading scholars examine the initial reception of the Commentaries in the context of debates over religion and politics in eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland.

Having shown Blackstone's volumes to be a contested work of the Enlightenment, the remaining chapters assess critical responses to Blackstone's influence on the status of women and on the teaching of law in Britain and America.

While Blackstone and his Commentaries have been widely lauded and memorialised in marble, this volume highlights the extent to which they have also attracted censure, disapproval and disparagement.

1. Rationalising the Common Law: Blackstone and His Predecessors

Michael Lobban

2. The ‘Least Repulsive’ Work on a ‘Repulsive Subject’: Jeremy Bentham on William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England

Philip Schofield

3. Blackstone, Expositor and Censor of Law Both Made and Found

Jessie Allen

4. William Blackstone, Edward Gibbon and Thomas Winchester: The Case for an Oxford Enlightenment

Ian Doolittle

5. Rational Dissent and Blackstone’s Commentaries

Anthony Page

6. Blackstone, Parliamentary Sovereignty and his Irish Critics

Ultán Gillen