Re-interpreting Blackstone's commentaries : a seminal text in national and international contexts

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Re-interpreting Blackstone's commentaries : a seminal text in national and international contexts

edited by Wilfrid Prest

Hart Pub., 2014

Available at  / 5 libraries

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Includes bibliographical references and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

This collection explores the remarkable impact and continuing influence of William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, from the work’s original publication in the 1760s down to the present. Contributions by cultural and literary scholars, and intellectual and legal historians trace the manner in which this truly seminal text has established its authority well beyond the author’s native shores or his own limited lifespan. In the first section, ‘Words and Visions’, Kathryn Temple, Simon Stern, Cristina S Martinez and Michael Meehan discuss the Commentaries’ aesthetic and literary qualities as factors contributing to the work’s unique status in Anglo-American legal culture. The second group of essays traces the nature and dimensions of Blackstone’s impact in various jurisdictions outside England, namely Quebec (Michel Morin), Louisiana and the United States more generally (John W Cairns and Stephen M Sheppard), North Carolina (John V Orth) and Australasia (Wilfrid Prest). Finally Horst Dippel, Paul Halliday and Ruth Paley examine aspects of Blackstone’s influential constitutional and political ideas, while Jessie Allen concludes the volume with a personal account of ‘Reading Blackstone in the Twenty-First Century and the Twenty-First Century through Blackstone’. This volume is a sequel to the well-received collection Blackstone and his Commentaries: Biography, Law, History (Hart Publishing, 2009).

Table of Contents

I WORDS AND VISIONS 1 Blackstone’s ‘Stutter’: the (Anti)Performance of the Commentaries Kathryn Temple William Blackstone: Courtroom Dramatist? Simon Stern 2 Blackstone as Draughtsman: Picturing the Law Cristina S Martinez 3 Blackstone’s Commentaries: England’s Legal Georgic? Michael Meehan II BEYOND ENGLAND 4 Blackstone in the Bayous: Inscribing Slavery in the Louisiana Digest of 1808 John W Cairns Legal Jambalaya Stephen M Sheppard 5 Blackstone and the Birth of Quebec’s Distinct Legal Culture 1765–1867 Michel Morin 6 Blackstone’s Ghost: Law and Legal Education in North Carolina John V Orth 7 Antipodean Blackstone Wilfrid Prest III LAW AND POLITICS 8 Blackstone’s King Paul D Halliday Modern Blackstone: the King’s Two Bodies, the Supreme Court and the President Ruth Paley 9 Blackstone’s Commentaries and the Origins of Modern Constitutionalism Horst Dippel 10 Reading Blackstone in the Twenty-First Century and the Twenty-First Century through Blackstone Jessie Allen

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