Commentaries on the Laws of England
by William Blackstone
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William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England is widely considered “the most celebrated, widely circulated, and influential law book ever published in the English Language.”[1] Blackstone was born in 1723, the son of a prosperous silk mercer in Cheapside, London.[2] He was originally educated at the Charterhouse School and matriculated at Pembroke College of Oxford in 1738.[3] Two years into his time at Oxford, Blackstone was admitted as a candidate to the Bachelor in Civil Law degree (BCL) and in 1741 was granted admission to the Middle Temple.[4] He was unsatisfied with practicing law, however, and preferred instead the academic life.[5] In his teaching, Blackstone sought to:
lay down a general and comprehensive Plan of the Laws of England; to deduce their History and Antiquities; to select and illustrate their Leading Rules, and Fundamental Principles; to explain their Reason and Utility; and to compare them frequently with the Laws of Nature and of other Nations; without dwelling too minutely on the Niceties of Practice, or the more refined Distinctions of particular Cases.[6]
In 1758, Blackstone was awarded the title of the first Vinerian chair of English law, a salaried position created in accordance with the will of the late Charles Viner.[7] Seven years later, he published the first edition of his Commentaries on the Laws of England, his premier work.[8] “In some 2000 pages the common law's tortuous complexities were outlined in a manner at once authoritative, clear, elegant, and even engaging.”[9] The Commentaries were immediately a success. In their first printing in the colonies, 1400 copies were ordered for Philadelphia alone.[10] The Commentaries are ranked second only to the Bible in the amount of influence they played on the American founders.[11] In the wake of his successful publication, Blackstone was appointed a Justice of the Common Pleas and served out his days on the bench until his death in 1780.[12]
Bibliographic Information
Author: William Blackstone (1723-1780)
Title: Commentaries on the Laws of England.
Published: Oxford: Printed at the Clarendon Press, 1765-1769.
Edition: First edition; four volumes.
Evidence for Inclusion in Wythe's Library
Description of the Wolf Law Library's copy
View this book in William & Mary's online catalog.
External Links
References
- ↑ Wilfrid Prest, “Blackstone, Sir William (1723-1780)” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004- ), accessed 3 October 2013. (Subscription required for access.)
- ↑ I. G. Doolittle, "Sir William Blackstone And His Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–9): A Biographical Approach," Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 3, no. 1 (1983):100.
- ↑ Prest, “Blackstone, Sir William.”
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ William Bader, "Some Thoughts on Blackstone, Precedent and Originalism," Vermont Law Review 19, no. 5 (1995): 7.
- ↑ Ibid: 8.
- ↑ Julian Waterman, "Mansfield and Blackstone's Commentaries," The University of Chicago Law Review 1, no. 4 (1934): 554.