Blackstone in America
Selected Essays of Kathryn Preyer

Blackstone in America collects Professor Preyer's award-winning essays in this easily accessible volume, with new introductions by three leading scholars of early American law.

Mary Bilder (Author), Maeva Marcus (Author), R. Kent Newmyer (Author)

9780521490870, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 31 August 2009

302 pages
24 x 16 x 2.3 cm, 0.57 kg

"This is more than a memorial to a distinguished scholar--it is a book that should be put before every beginning student of American constitutional and legal history, to learn how a master of the craft does it. It is not merely a commemorative monument to a great career, but a monument for use."
H-Law, R. B. Bernstein, New York Law School

Blackstone in America explores the creative process of transplantation - the way in which American legislators and judges refashioned the English common law inheritance to fit the republican political culture of the new nation. With current scholarship returning to focus on the transformation of Anglo-American law to 'American' law, Professor Kathryn Preyer's lifelong study of the constitutional and legal culture of the early American republic has acquired new relevance and a wider audience. The collection includes Professor Preyer's work on criminal law, the early national judiciary, and the history of the book. All nine of Professor Preyer's important and award-winning essays are easily accessible in this volume, with new introductions by three leading scholars of early American law.

1. Introduction Stanley N. Katz
Part I. Law and Politics in the Early Republic: 2. Introduction Maeva Marcus
3. Federalist policy and the Judiciary Act of 1801
4. The appointment of Chief Justice Marshall
5. The midnight judges
6. US v. Callender: judge and jury in a republican society
Part II. The Law of Crimes in Post-Revolutionary America: 7. Introduction Kent Newmyer
8. Penal measures in the American colonies: an overview
9. Crime, the criminal law and reform in post-revolutionary Virginia
10. Jurisdiction to punish: authority, federalism and the common law of crimes in the early republic
Part III. The History of the Book and Trans-Atlantic Connections: 11. Introduction Mary Sarah Bilder
12. Beccaria and the founding fathers
13. Two enlightened criminal law reformers: Thomas Jefferson of Virginia and Peter Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany.

Subject Areas: Laws of Specific jurisdictions [LN], Legal history [LAZ], History of the Americas [HBJK]