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The Transatlantic Constitution: Colonial Legal Culture and the Empire

The Transatlantic Constitution: Colonial Legal Culture and the Empire

by Mary Sarah Bilder (Author)

  • New

    Paperback 2008

    $43.49
Synopsis

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.

$43.49

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 308
 Edition: First Paperback Edition
 Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 31 Mar 2008
ISBN 10: 0674027191
ISBN 13: 9780674027190
Book Overview: The Transatlantic Constitution makes a major impact on the way we see the legacy of the colonial period and the later federal relationship that continues to affect us today. Mary Sarah Bilder presents an intensive examination of the structure and functioning of the legal relationship across the Atlantic, between the people of a colony and the legal metropolis in London. This exhaustively researched and deeply informed book recasts the way we think about how the transatlantic relationship affected law and authority. -- David Konig, Washington University in St. Louis Mary Sarah Bilder has taken an old and long-unfashionable topic and successfully given it new interest, perspective, and importance. She is the first historian to explore the relationship between colonial legal culture and sources of constitutional authority within the British empire, and she does so with a fine appreciation for the negotiated, pragmatic, and changing nature of the relationship. This book is a major contribution to colonial American legal, constitutional, and imperial history and sets the standard for future study of the transatlantic constitution. -- Bruce H. Mann, author of Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence

Media Reviews
An excellent example of the wealth of fresh insights that a focus on constitutionalism still has to offer... Bilder's argument is so compelling, and her delineation of transatlantic legal culture so revealing, that historians will undoubtedly feel the need to test her results elsewhere. Atlantic history will be all the richer for it. - Alexander B. Haskell, William and Mary Quarterly This study of the British imperial constitution, based upon extensive research in English and American archives, is one of the more significant recent pieces of scholarship in this area... Mary Sarah Bilder has come to some new conclusions that make this short volume essential reading for all students of early America. - Herbert A. Johnson, Journal of American History
Author Bio
Mary Sarah Bilder is Professor of Law, Boston College Law School.