The Transatlantic Constitution: Colonial Legal Culture and the Empire
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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. Herbert A. Johnson - Journal of American History 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.
Acknowledgments viiA Note on Legal Terms xiIntroduction: The Transatlantic Constitution and the Colonial World 1The Transatlantic Legal WorldLegal Practitioners and Legal Literates 15The Laws of England 31The Laws of Rhode Island 51Transatlantic Legal PracticeThe Transatlantic Appeal 73Women, Family, Property 91Personnel and Practices 116Visions of the Transatlantic ConstitutionReligious Establishment and Orthodoxy 145Commerce and Currency 168The Transatlantic Constitution and the Nation 186Notes 199Index 283
