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The Common Law in Colonial America Volume IV: Law and the Constitution on the Eve of Independence, 1735-1776

The Common Law in Colonial America Volume IV: Law and the Constitution on the Eve of Independence, 1735-1776

Author: William E. Nelson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780190850487
Published In: July 2018
Format: Hardback
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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Description
Contents

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The eminent legal historian William E. Nelson's magisterial four-volume The Common Law in Colonial America traces how the many legal orders of Britain's thirteen North American colonies gradually evolved into one American system.

This fourth and final volume begins where volume three ended. It focuses on the laws of the thirteen colonies in the mid-eighteenth century and on constitutional events leading up to the American Revolution. Nelson first examines procedural and substantive law and looks at important shifts in the law to show how the mid-eighteenth- century colonial legal system in large part functioned effectively in the interests both of Great Britain and of its thirteen colonies.

Nelson then turns to constitutional events leading to the Revolution. Here he shows how lawyers deployed ideological arguments not for their own sake, but in order to protect colonial institutional structures and the socio-economic interests of their clients.

As lawyers deployed the arguments, they developed them into a constitutional theory that gave primacy to common-law constitutional rights and local self-government. In the process, the lawyers became leaders of the revolutionary movement and a dominant political force in the new United States.

Introduction

Chapter 1: Common Law Constitutionalism

Chapter 2: Localist Constitutionalism

Chapter 3: Uncontested Legal Practices

Chapter 4: The Well-Functioning Empire of the Mid-Eighteenth Century

Chapter 5: Government Failure in Two Colonies

Chapter 6: Weakening the Bonds of Empire

Chapter 7: Testing the Bonds of Empire

Chapter 8: Terminating the Ties of Empire

Chapter 9: Conclusion: Legal and Constitutional Legacies