The Transatlantic Constitution: Colonial Legal Culture and the Empire

by Bilder, Mary Sarah

• ISBN13: 9780674015128
• ISBN10: 0674015126
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-12-01
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

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	vii
A Note on Legal Terms	xi
Introduction: The Transatlantic Constitution and the Colonial World	1	(14)
THE TRANSATLANTIC LEGAL WORLD
1 Legal Practitioners and Legal Literates	15	(16)
2 The Laws of England	31	(20)
3 The Laws of Rhode Island	51	(22)
II TRANSATLANTIC LEGAL PRACTICE
4 The Transatlantic Appeal	73	(18)
5 Women, Family, Property	91	(25)
6 Personnel and Practices	116	(29)
III VISIONS OF THE TRANSATLANTIC CONSTITUTION
7 Religious Establishment and Orthodoxy	145	(23)
8 Commerce and Currency	168	(18)
9 The Transatlantic Constitution and the Nation	186	(13)
Notes	199	(84)
Index	283