James Stoner's purpose is an ambitious one: to recover the common law basis of American constitutionalism.

American constitutionalism in general, he argues, and judicial review in particular, cannot be fully understood without acknowledging their roots in both common law and liberal political theory. But for the most part, the common law underpinnings of constitutionalism have received short shrift.

Through close study of liberal political philosopher Thomas Hobbes and the writings of Edward Coke, a seventeenth-century judge and parliamentarian whose opinion in Doctor Bonham's Case...