William Blackstone (1723–1780)

Already somewhat familiar with U.S. law, I read only the introduction and certain chapters of interest in Volume 1. I did not learn a lot, but laypersons with a strong interest in law and its foundations could surely enjoy discovering some basics from this. Of course, Blackstone is concerned with British law about 1750. But the fundamentals have hardly changed, and U.S. law is modeled very closely upon British law.

It is fortunate that Blackstone's Commentaries were available and well known show more to our founding fathers. Laws, handed down and refined by experience since before even the written word*, may be our most precious inheritance.

* Blackstone pointed out that even Cain, in killing Abel, knew he had committed a crime. show less

As indicated in the 1765 Preface, "The knowledge of our laws and constitution was adopted as a liberal science by general academical authority...". Once Blackstone was supported as a lecturer ("elected as the first Vinerian professor"--began the first lectures on common law in any university in the world) he was led "by both duty and inclination to investigate the elements of the law, and the grounds of our civil polity". He remarks that all who attend the public administration of justice show more must have noticed that an acquaintance with the laws and principles of jurisprudence "hath given a beauty and energy to many modern judicial decisions, with which our ancestors were wholly unacquainted".
{Ouch! or I guess you had to be there.}
The Commentaries was the single most widely owned law book in Colonial and Revolutionary America. The Framers of the Constitution knew it intimately. American colonies were "Christian commonwealths" (and most of them restricted holding office to Christians, and some exclusively to Protestants). Blackstone--standing against the plutocrats -- recognized there was an obligation "of the community"--he enfranchised the polis--to provide the necessities of life and health:

"The law not only regards life and member, and protects every man in the enjoyment of them, but also furnishes him with every thing necessary for their support. For there is no man so indigent or wrethced, but he may demand a supply sufficient for all the necessities of life, from the more opulent part of the community,mby means of the several statutes enacted for the relief of the poor."

Were there any actual "statutes" passed by the Lords imposing upon themselves the duty to relieve the starving poor? They were arresting the poor and sending them to the Colonies as indentured servants. The Mayflower had three "abandoned children" aboard who were placed into servitude by the law Lords.

I think Blackstone was a greater man than he is given credit for, even in Chitty's adulation which prefaces this print. Blackstone was born into middle-class prosperity, only to be orphaned and impoverished. He worked hard, and never asked for much for himself, rather stepping up to opportunities others neglected.

Once educated on a pauper scholarship, he began as a barrister--with few "connections", and no title. Not even a "bar exam" or monopoly profession. He served in Parliament where he was known to be "averse to party violence", according to Chitty's biography in this publication.

By publishing this book from his lecture notes, Blackstone able to marry and build an estate. The "common law", fought for by Boadiccea herself, was not organized, or even written, until Blackstone. Academics say that the Commentaries changed English Law from a system based on actions to a system of substantive law.

The Commentaries helped to solidify the concept of living "under law", which became the substitution the Americans made for "the King", which they did not have or find necessary. In England, legal education had stalled--compare it to the advanced Padua schools.

Blackstone's work gave the Law "at least a veneer of scholarly respectability". William Searle Holdsworth, one of Blackstone's successors as Vinerian Professor, suggests that without the Commentaries, the United States (and other English speaking countries) would not have so universally adopted the common law.

Blackstone taught, judged, wrote and researched. In his last years was appointed to the King's Bench. He lived moderately, although he was large. OK, he was obese. He lived 1723-1780 working through his final illness. Age 57. He read much, and remembered what he read. show less

... I have long lamented with you the depreciation of law science. The opinion seems to be that Blackstone is to us what the Alcoran is to the Mahometans, that every thing which is necessary is in him, & what is not in him is not necessary. I still lend my counsel & books to such young students as will fix themselves in the neighborhood. Coke's institutes, all, & reports are their first, & Blackstone the last book, after an intermediate course of 2 or 3 years. It is nothing more than an show more elegant digest of what they will then have acquired from the real fountains of the law. Now men are born scholars, lawyers, Doctors; in our day this was confined to poets ... — Thomas Jefferson to John Tyler, 26 May 1810 show less

known as Jones' Blackstone