The Many Legalities of Early America

by Tomlins, Christopher L.; Mann, Bruce H.

• ISBN13: 9780807849644
• ISBN10: 0807849642
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-05-01
• Publisher: Omohundro Inst of Early Amer

Summary

Seventeen essays use the concept of "legality" to explore ways in which early Americans ordered their relationships as individuals, groups, classes, communities, and states. Addressing issues of gender, ethnicity, family, patriarchy, culture, and dependence, contributors explore the transatlantic context of early American law, the negotiation between European and indigenous cultures, and the transformation of many legalities to a uniform legal culture.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	v
Introduction
Christopher Tomlins
The Many Legalities of Colonization: A Manifesto of Destiny for Early American Legal History	1	(24)
PART ONE Atlantic Crossings
Discovery, Grant, Charter, Conquest, or Purchase: John Adams on the Legal Basis for English Possession of North America	25	(22)
James Muldoon
Salamanders and Sons of God: The Culture of Appeal in Early New England	47	(31)
Mary Sarah Bilder
``Rigid and Inclement'': Origins of the Jamica Slave Laws of the Seventeenth Century	78	(19)
David Barry Gaspar
Legal Fictions and the Rule (s) of Law: The Jeffersonian Critique of Common-Law Adjudication	97	(26)
David Thomas Konig
PART TWO Intercultural Encounters
``Justice Will Be Done Us'': Algonquian Demands for Reciprocity in the Courts of European Settlers	123	(27)
Katherine Hermes
``Lest We Go in Search of Relief to Our Lands and Our Nation'': Customary Justice and Colonial Law in the New Mexico Borderlands, 1680-1821	150	(31)
James F. Brooks
Customary Laws of Marriage: Legal Pluralism, Colonialism, and Narragansett Indian Identity in Eighteenth-Century Rhode Island	181	(38)
Ann Marie Plane
PART THREE Rules of Law: Legal Relations as Social Relations
``Liberty to Complaine'': Servant Petitions in Maryland, 1652-1797	219	(31)
Christine Daniels
``As Though I My Self Was Pr[e]sent'': Virginia Women with Power of Attorney	250	(22)
Linda L. Sturtz
Women and the Political Culture of Eighteenth-Century Virginia: Gender, Property Law, and Voting Rights	272	(21)
John G. Kolp
Terri L. Snyder
Age of Reason? Children, Testimony, and Consent in Early America	293	(44)
Holly Brewer
PART FOUR Rules of Law: Legal Regimes and Their Social Effects
Was There a Calvinist Type of Patriarchy? New Haven Colony Reconsidered in the Early Modern Context	337	(20)
Cornelia Hughes Dayton
The Limits of Authority: Courts, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Middle Colonies, 1670-1710	357	(31)
William M. Offutt, Jr.
Farmers in Court: Orange County, North Carolina, 1750-1776	388	(26)
Richard Lyman Bushman
The Long Road to Vidal: Charity Law and State Formation in Early America	414	(28)
A. G. Roeber
Afterword The Death and Transfiguration of Early American Legal History	442	(7)
Bruce H. Mann
Index	449	(16)
Notes on the Contributors	465