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...

James Stoner's first book, Common Law and Liberal Theory: Coke, Hobbes, and the Origins of American Constitutionalism, was hailed as "forceful and wise . . . powerful and convincing" by the American Historical Review and "a stunning achievement" by the Journal of Politics. In that work, which provided historical background to the Founding era, he focused on the common law almost exclusively as a mode of legal thought. He now amplifies and extends his thinking on this subject with a study that transcends such "formalistic" limits and reveals how constitutional law has...