Download or read book The American Revolution In the Law written by Shannon C. Stimson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1773 John Adams observed that one source of tension in the debate between England and the colonies could be traced to the different conceptions each side had of the terms "legally" and "constitutionally"--different conceptions that were, as Shannon Stimson here demonstrates, symptomatic of deeper jurisprudential, political, and even epistemological differences between the two governmental outlooks. This study of the political and legal thought of the American revolution and founding period explores the differences between late eighteenth-century British and American perceptions of the judicial and jural power. In Stimson's book, which will interest both historians and theorists of law and politics, the study of colonial juries provides an incisive tool for organizing, interpreting, and evaluating various strands of American political theory, and for challenging the common assumption of a basic unity of vision of the roots of Anglo-American jurisprudence. The author introduces an original concept, that of "judicial space," to account for the development of the highly political role of the Supreme Court, a judicial body that has no clear counterpart in English jurisprudence. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book The Birth of American Law written by John D. Bessler and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Birth of American Law: An Italian Philosopher and the American Revolution tells the forgotten, untold story of the origins of U.S. law. Before the Revolutionary War, a 26-year-old Italian thinker, Cesare Beccaria, published On Crimes and Punishments, a runaway bestseller that shaped the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and early American laws. America's Founding Fathers, including early U.S. Presidents, avidly read Beccaria's book--a product of the Italian Enlightenment that argued against tyranny and the death penalty. Beccaria's book shaped American views on everything from free speech to republicanism, to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," to gun ownership and the founders' understanding of "cruel and unusual punishments," the famous phrase in the U.S. Constitution's Eighth Amendment. In opposing torture and infamy, Beccaria inspired America's founders to jettison England's Bloody Code, heavily reliant on executions and corporal punishments, and to adopt the penitentiary system. The cast of characters in The Birth of American Law includes the usual suspects--George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and James Madison. But it also includes the now little-remembered Count Luigi Castiglioni, a botanist from Milan who--decades before Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America--toured all thirteen original American states before the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Also figuring in this dramatic story of the American Revolution: Madison's Princeton classmate William Bradford, an early U.S. Attorney General and Beccaria devotee; John Dickinson, the "Penman of the Revolution" who wrote of Beccaria's "genius" and "masterly hand"; James Wilson and Dr. Benjamin Rush, signers of the Declaration of Independence and fellow Beccaria admirers; and Philip Mazzei, Jefferson's Italian-American neighbor at Monticello and yet another Beccaria enthusiast. In documenting Beccaria's game-changing influence, The Birth of American Law sheds important new light on the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the creation of American law. This book is part of the Legal History Series, edited by H. Jefferson Powell, Duke University School of Law. The Birth of American Law was awarded the 2015 Scribes Book Award and the First Prize in the 2015 AAIS Book Award competition (in the 18th/19th century category). It was also named INDIEFAB's 2014 Gold Winner for History!
Download or read book Law in the American Revolution and the Revolution in the Law written by Hendrik Hartog and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Constitutional History of the American Revolution written by John Phillip Reid and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book In a Defiant Stance written by John P. Reid and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The minimum of violence accompanying the success of the American Revolution resulted in large part, argues this book, from the conditions of law the British allowed in the American colonies. By contrast, Ireland's struggle for independence was prolonged, bloody, and bitter largely because of the repressive conditions of law imposed by Britain. Examining the most rebellious American colony, Massachusetts Bay, Professor Reid finds that law was locally controlled while imperial law was almost nonexistent as an influence on the daily lives of individuals. In Ireland the same English common law, because of imperial control of legal machinery, produced an opposite result. The Irish were forced to resort to secret, underground violence. The author examines various Massachusetts Bay institutions to show the consequences of whig party control, in contrast to the situation in 18th-century Ireland. A general conclusion is that law, the conditions of positive law, and the matter of who controls the law may have more significant effects on the course of events than is generally assumed.
Download or read book The Clamor of Lawyers written by Peter Charles Hoffer and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-15 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Clamor of Lawyers explores a series of extended public pronouncements that British North American colonial lawyers crafted between 1761 and 1776. Most, though not all, were composed outside of the courtroom and detached from on-going litigation. While they have been studied as political theory, these writings and speeches are rarely viewed as the work of active lawyers, despite the fact that key protagonists in the story of American independence were members of the bar with extensive practices. The American Revolution was, in fact, a lawyers’ revolution. Peter Charles Hoffer and Williamjames Hull Hoffer broaden our understanding of the role that lawyers played in framing and resolving the British imperial crisis. The revolutionary lawyers, including John Adams’s idol James Otis, Jr., Pennsylvania’s John Dickinson, and Virginians Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, along with Adams and others, deployed the skills of their profession to further the public welfare in challenging times. They were the framers of the American Revolution and the governments that followed. Loyalist lawyers and lawyers for the crown also participated in this public discourse, but because they lost out in the end, their arguments are often slighted or ignored in popular accounts. This division within the colonial legal profession is central to understanding the American Republic that resulted from the Revolution.
Download or read book Revolutionary War Law and Lawyers written by Thomas J Shaw Esq and published by . This book was released on 2019-09 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American Revolutionary War was the first "legal" war, where two nations with firm commitments to a common legal tradition faced off. Two hundred legal issues are identified from this time of war, from the supremacy of imperial law, taxation without representation, general writs of assistance, and founding new governments, to searching for gunpowder, defining allegiances, holding military officers to account, and establishing prize courts. For each legal issue identified, the relevant statutes passed or military orders given and the cases tried are discussed. Some trials are well known, other are not, while others simply have been forgotten but all are tied together here to create a legal overview of this conflict. The legal personalities behind the issues, laws, and cases are also presented. Exactly 274 lawyers and judges from the principal countries in this conflict, primarily America and Britain, are brought to life. Some were famous as current or future national leaders, others were relatively unknown then and now, and some gave their lives in service, often at a young age. These people, of differing nationalities, cultures, training, and roles, present a compelling human backdrop to understanding the legal story of the war.In addition to presenting the story behind these legal issues from across the globe, the book provides practical assistance by looking to the commonality of many issues across the major global wars with American involvement. Some of the issues presented and precedents set are useful in understanding and resolving current and future conflicts. This book has something for all types of readers: lawyers, judges, law students, fans of history or the history of war, and the general reader.
Download or read book By Birth or Consent written by Holly Brewer and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2012-12-01 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In mid-sixteenth-century England, people were born into authority and responsibility based on their social status. Thus elite children could designate property or serve in Parliament, while children of the poorer sort might be forced to sign labor contracts or be hanged for arson or picking pockets. By the late eighteenth century, however, English and American law began to emphasize contractual relations based on informed consent rather than on birth status. In By Birth or Consent, Holly Brewer explores how the changing legal status of children illuminates the struggle over consent and status in England and America. As it emerged through religious, political, and legal debates, the concept of meaningful consent challenged the older order of birthright and became central to the development of democratic political theory. The struggle over meaningful consent had tremendous political and social consequences, affecting the whole order of society. It granted new powers to fathers and guardians at the same time that it challenged those of masters and kings. Brewer's analysis reshapes the debate about the origins of modern political ideology and makes connections between Reformation religious debates, Enlightenment philosophy, and democratic political theory.
Download or read book The Constitutional Origins of the American Revolution written by Jack P. Greene and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-25 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using the British Empire as a case study, this succinct study argues that the establishment of overseas settlements in America created a problem of constitutional organization. The failure to resolve the resulting tensions led to the thirteen continental colonies seceding from the empire in 1776. Challenging those historians who have assumed that the British had the law on their side during the debates that led to the American Revolution, this volume argues that the empire had long exhibited a high degree of constitutional multiplicity, with each colony having its own discrete constitution. Contending that these constitutions cannot be conflated with the metropolitan British constitution, it argues that British refusal to accept the legitimacy of colonial understandings of the sanctity of the many colonial constitutions and the imperial constitution was the critical element leading to the American Revolution.
Download or read book The Glorious Revolution and the Continuity of Law written by Richard S. Kay and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2014-11-10 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Glorious Revolution and the Continuity of Law explores the relationship between law and revolution. Revolt - armed or not - is often viewed as the overthrow of legitimate rulers. Historical experience, however, shows that revolutions are frequently accompanied by the invocation rather than the repudiation of law. No example is clearer than that of the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89. At that time the unpopular but lawful Catholic king, James II, lost his throne and was replaced by his Protestant son-in-law and daughter, William of Orange and Mary, with James's attempt to recapture the throne thwarted at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland. The revolutionaries had to negotiate two contradictory but intensely held convictions. The first was that the essential role of law in defining and regulating the activity of the state must be maintained. The second was that constitutional arrangements to limit the unilateral authority of the monarch and preserve an indispensable role for the houses of parliament in public decision-making had to be established. In the circumstances of 1688-89, the revolutionaries could not be faithful to the second without betraying the first. Their attempts to reconcile these conflicting objectives involved the frequent employment of legal rhetoric to justify their actions. In so doing, they necessarily used the word "law" in different ways. It could denote the specific rules of positive law; it could simply express devotion to the large political and social values that underlay the legal system; or it could do something in between. In 1688-89 it meant all those things to different participants at different times. This study adds a new dimension to the literature of the Glorious Revolution by describing, analyzing and elaborating this central paradox: the revolutionaries tried to break the rules of the constitution and, at the same time, be true to them.
Download or read book Fundamental Law and the American Revolution 1760 1776 written by Charles F. Mullett and published by . This book was released on 1966 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Law as Reproduction and Revolution written by Yves Dezalay and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction : Legal revolutions, cosmopolitan legal elites, and interconnected histories -- Learned law, legal education, social capital, and states : European Geneses of these relationships and the enduring role of family capital -- Legal hybrids, corporate law firms, the Langdellian Revolution in legal education, and the Construction of a U.S.-oriented international justice through an alliance of U.S. corporate lawyers with European professors -- Social and neo-liberal revolutions in the United States -- India : an embattled senior bar, the marginalization of legal knowledge, and an internationalized challenge -- Hong Kong as a paradigm case : an open market for corporate law firms and the technologies of legal education reform as Chinese hegemony grows -- South Korea and Japan : contrasting attacks through legal education reform on the traditional conservative and insular bar -- Legal education, international strategies, and rebuilding the value of legal capital in China / coauthored with Zhizhou Wang -- Conclusion : Combining social capital with learned capital: competing on different imperial paths.
Download or read book Constitutional History of the American Revolution Volume II written by John Phillip Reid and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2003-03 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Phillip Reid addresses the central constitutional issues that divided the American colonists from their English legislators: the authority to tax, the authority to legislate, the security of rights, the nature of law, the foundation of constitutional government in custom and contractarian theory, and the search for a constitutional settlement.
Download or read book Law and People in Colonial America written by Peter Charles Hoffer and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential, rigorous, and lively introduction to the beginnings of American law. How did American colonists transform British law into their own? What were the colonies' first legal institutions, and who served in them? And why did the early Americans develop a passion for litigation that continues to this day? In Law and People in Colonial America, Peter Charles Hoffer tells the story of early American law from its beginnings on the British mainland to its maturation during the crisis of the American Revolution. For the men and women of colonial America, Hoffer explains, law was a pervasive influence in everyday life. Because it was their law, the colonists continually adapted it to fit changing circumstances. They also developed a sense of legalism that influenced virtually all social, economic, and political relationships. This sense of intimacy with the law, Hoffer argues, assumed a transforming power in times of crisis. In the midst of a war for independence, American revolutionaries used their intimacy with the law to explain how their rebellion could be lawful, while legislators wrote republican constitutions that would endure for centuries. Today the role of law in American life is more pervasive than ever. And because our system of law involves a continuing dialogue between past and present, interpreting the meaning of precedent and of past legislation, the study of legal history is a vital part of every citizen's basic education. Taking advantage of rich new scholarship that goes beyond traditional approaches to view slavery as a fundamental cultural and social institution as well as an economic one, this second edition includes an extensive, entirely new chapter on colonial and revolutionary-era slave law. Law and People in Colonial America is a lively introduction to early American law. It makes for essential reading.
Download or read book Constitutional History of the American Revolution V 4 Authority of Law written by John Phillip Reid and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2003-03 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work addresses the central constitutional issues that divided the American colonists from their English legislators: the authority to tax, the authority to legislate, the security of rights, the nature of law, and the foundation of constitutional government in custom and contractarian theory.
Download or read book British Statutes in American Law 1776 1836 written by Elizabeth Gaspar Brown and published by William s Hein & Company. This book was released on 1964 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In consultation with William Wirt Blume. Foreword by Allen F. Smith. "A study of the extent & content of use of such statutes." Bibliographic Reference: Miller & Schwartz, Recommended Publications for Legal Research. "B" Rated 1984 93
Download or read book Law s Imagined Republic written by Steven Wilf and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-19 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Law's Imagined Republic shows how the American Revolution was marked by the rapid proliferation of law talk across the colonies. This legal language was both elite and popular, spanned different forms of expression from words to rituals, and included simultaneously real and imagined law. Since it was employed to mobilize resistance against England, the proliferation of revolutionary legal language became intimately intertwined with politics. Drawing on a wealth of material from criminal cases, Steven Wilf reconstructs the intertextual ways Americans from the 1760s through the 1790s read law: reading one case against another and often self-consciously comparing transatlantic legal systems as they thought about how they might construct their own legal system in a new republic. What transformed extraordinary tales of crime into a political forum? How did different ways of reading or speaking about law shape our legal origins? And, ultimately, how might excavating innovative approaches to law in this formative period, which were constructed in the street as well as in the courtroom, alter our usual understanding of contemporary American legal institutions? Law's Imagined Republic tells the story of the untidy beginnings of American law.
