The transatlantic constitution : colonial legal culture and the empire
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The transatlantic constitution : colonial legal culture and the empire
Harvard University Press, 2008, c2004
- : pbk
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Note
Originally published: 2004
"First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 2008"--T.p. verso
Bibliographical references: p. 199-281
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Departing from traditional approaches to colonial legal history, Mary Sarah Bilder argues that American law and legal culture developed within the framework of an evolving, unwritten transatlantic constitution that lawyers, legislators, and litigants on both sides of the Atlantic understood. The central tenet of this constitution-that colonial laws and customs could not be repugnant to the laws of England but could diverge for local circumstances-shaped the legal development of the colonial world.
Focusing on practices rather than doctrines, Bilder describes how the pragmatic and flexible conversation about this constitution shaped colonial law: the development of the legal profession; the place of English law in the colonies; the existence of equity courts and legislative equitable relief; property rights for women and inheritance laws; commercial law and currency reform; and laws governing religious establishment. Using as a case study the corporate colony of Rhode Island, which had the largest number of appeals of any mainland colony to the English Privy Council, she reconstructs a largely unknown world of pre-Constitutional legal culture.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments A Note on Legal Terms Introduction: The Transatlantic Constitution and the Colonial World Part I. The Transatlantic Legal World 1. Legal Practitioners and Legal Literates 2. The Laws of England 3. The Laws of Rhode Island Part II. Transatlantic Legal Practice 4. The Transatlantic Appeal 5. Women, Family, Property 6. Personnel and Practices Part III. Visions of the Transatlantic Constitution 7. Religious Establishment and Orthodoxy 8. Commerce and Currency 9. The Transatlantic Constitution and the Nation Notes Index
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