Blackstone and his critics / edited by Anthony Page and Wilfrid Pest.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Page, Anthony, 1969- editor.

Prest, Wilfrid R., editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Blackstone, William, 1723-1780. Commentaries on the laws of England.

Blackstone, William.

Law--England--History.

Law.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford [UK] ; Portland, Oregon : Hart Publishing, 2018.

Summary:

William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69) is perhaps the most elegant and influential legal text in the history of the common law. By one estimate, Blackstone has been cited well over 10,000 times in American judicial opinions alone. Prominent in recent reassessment of Blackstone and his works, Wilfrid Prest also convened the Adelaide symposia which have now generated two collections of essays: Blackstone and his Commentaries: Biography, Law, History (2009), and Re-Interpreting Blackstone's Commentaries: A Seminal Text in National and International Contexts (2014). This third collection focuses on Blackstone's critics and detractors. Leading scholars examine the initial reception of the Commentaries in the context of debates over law, religion and politics in eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland. Having shown Blackstone's volumes to be a contested work of the Enlightenment, the remaining chapters assess critical responses to Blackstone on family law, the status of women and legal education in Britain and America. While Blackstone and his Commentaries have been widely lauded and memorialised in marble, this volume highlights the extent to which they have also attracted censure, controversy and disparagement

Contents:

Introduction

Anthony Page and Wilfrid Prest

Rationalising the common law: Blackstone and his predecessors ? Michael Lobban

The "least repulsive" work on a "repulsive subject": Jeremy Bentham on William Blackstone's commentaries on the laws of England

Philip Schofield

Blackstone, expositor and censor of law both made and found

Jessie Allen

William Blackstone, Edward Gibbon and Thomas Winchester: the case for an Oxford enlightenment

Ian Doolittle

Rational dissent and Blackstone's commentaries

Anthony Page

Blackstone, parliamentary sovereignty and his Irish critics

Ultán Gillen

Blackstone, family law and the exclusion of the half blood in inheritance

Tim Stretton

Blackstone and women

Carolyn Steedman

Professing law in the shadow of the commentaries

David Lieberman

Hammond's Blackstone and the historical school of American jurisprudence

David M Rabban

A very narrowing effect upon our profession?: a progressive jurist confronts Blackstone

John V Orth

Blackstone?s posthumous reputation

Wilfrid Prest.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN:

9781509910489

1509910484

9781509910472

1509910476

OCLC:

1012673983