The minimum of violence accompanying the success of the American Revolution resulted in large part, argues this book, from the conditions of law the British allowed in the American colonies. By contrast, Ireland's struggle for independence was prolonged, bloody, and bitter largely because of the repressive conditions of law imposed by Britain.
Examining the most rebellious American colony, Massachusetts Bay, Professor Reid finds that law was locally controlled while imperial law was almost nonexistent as an influence on the daily lives of individuals. In Ireland the same English...
The minimum of violence accompanying the success of the American Revolution resulted in large part, argues this book, from the conditions of law th...
Do law and legal procedures exist only so long as there is an official authority to enforce them? Or do we have an unspoken sense of law and ethics?
To answer these questions, John Phillip Reid s Contested Empire explores the implicit notions of law shared by American and British fur traders in the Snake River country of Idaho and surrounding areas in the early nineteenth century. Both the United States and Great Britain had claimed this region, and passions were intense. Focusing mainly on Canadian explorer and trader Peter Skene Ogden, Reid finds that both side largely avoided violence...
Do law and legal procedures exist only so long as there is an official authority to enforce them? Or do we have an unspoken sense of law and ethics...
In today's courtroom, the jurors evaluate the evidence and pronounce the verdict while the judge has final authority in interpreting the law--but it was not always so. In colonial America, the jurors enjoyed a much greater say. Legal historian John Phillip Reid recounts how the judges gained their modern authority in the early nineteenth century by instituting courtroom practices modeled on the English "common law" judicial system. Reid brings this transformation, which in the days of the Early Republic spread throughout the states and even to the federal courts, down to human scale by...
In today's courtroom, the jurors evaluate the evidence and pronounce the verdict while the judge has final authority in interpreting the law--but it w...
Rule of law - the idea that the law is the nation's sovereign authority - has served as a cornerstone for constitutional theory and the jurisprudence of liberty. When law reigns over governors and the governed alike, a citizen need not fear capricious monarchs, arbitrary judges, or calculating bureaucrats. When a citizen obeys the law, life, liberty, and property are safe; if a citizen disobeys, the law alone will determine the appropriate punishment. While the rule of law's English roots can be found in the Middle Ages, its governing doctrine rose to power during the seventeenth and...
Rule of law - the idea that the law is the nation's sovereign authority - has served as a cornerstone for constitutional theory and the jurisprudence ...
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, English and American lawyers appealed to the ancient constitution as the cornerstone of liberty. The author demonstrates that this concept of an unchanging, ancient constitution, furnished English common lawyers and parliamentarians an argument with which to combat royal prerogative power.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, English and American lawyers appealed to the ancient constitution as the cornerstone of liberty. The auth...
John Phillip Reid is widely known for his groundbreaking work in American legal history. "A Law of Blood," first published in the early 1970s, led the way in an additional newly emerging academic field: American Indian history. As the field has flourished, this book has remained an authoritative text. Indeed, Gordon Morris Bakken writes in the foreword to this edition that Reid's original study "shaped scholarship and inquiry for decades." Forging the research methods that fellow historians would soon adopt, Reid carefully examines the organization and rules of Cherokee clans and towns....
John Phillip Reid is widely known for his groundbreaking work in American legal history. "A Law of Blood," first published in the early 1970s, led the...
Republishes articles by two senior legal historians. Besides summarizing what has now become classical literature in the field, it offers illuminating insight into what it means to be a professional legal historian.
Republishes articles by two senior legal historians. Besides summarizing what has now become classical literature in the field, it offers illuminating...
Focuses on generally unknown events and policies to demonstrate judicial dependence and legislative supremacy over the judiciary. This book disproves the validity of that assumption for state constitutionalism by concentrating on the law of New Hampshire - representative of the law in other jurisdictions - between the years 1789 and 1818.
Focuses on generally unknown events and policies to demonstrate judicial dependence and legislative supremacy over the judiciary. This book disproves ...
John Phillip Reid is one of the most highly regarded historians of law as it was practiced on the state level in the nascent United States. He is not just the recipient of numerous honors for his scholarship but the type of historian after whom such accolades are named: the John Phillip Reid Award is given annually by the American Society for Legal History to the author of the best book by a mid-career or senior scholar. "Legitimating the Law "is the third installment in a trilogy of books by Reid that seek to extend our knowledge about the judicial history of the early republic by...
John Phillip Reid is one of the most highly regarded historians of law as it was practiced on the state level in the nascent United States. He is n...
