E Pluribus Unum: How the Common Law Helped Unify and Liberate Colonial America, 1607-1776

by William E. Nelson

Overview

The colonies that comprised pre-revolutionary America had thirteen legal systems and governments. Given their diversity, how did they evolve into a single nation? In E Pluribus Unum, the eminent legal historian William E. Nelson explains how this diverse array of legal orders gradually converged over time, laying the groundwork for the founding of the United States. From their inception, the colonies exercised a range of approaches to the law. For instance, while New England based its legal system around the word of God, Maryland followed the common law tradition, and New York adhered to Dutch law. Over time, though, the British crown standardized legal procedure in an effort to more uniformly and efficiently exert control over the Empire. But, while the common law emerged as the dominant system across the colonies, its effects were far from what English rulers had envisioned. E Pluribus Unum highlights the political context in which the common law developed and how it influenced the United States Constitution. In practice, the triumph of the common law over competing approaches gave lawyers more authority than governing officials. By the end of the eighteenth century, many colonial legal professionals began to espouse constitutional ideology that would mature into the doctrine of judicial review. In turn, laypeople came to accept constitutional doctrine by the time of independence in 1776. Ultimately, Nelson shows that the colonies' gradual embrace of the common law was instrumental to the establishment of the United States. Not simply a masterful legal history of colonial America, Nelson's magnum opus fundamentally reshapes our understanding of the sources of both the American Revolution and the Founding.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190880828
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	06/04/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

William E. Nelson is Judge Edward Weinfeld Professor of Law, New York University. In 1961, he founded the Legal History Colloquium at NYU Law School, where nearly 100 younger scholars have held fellowships and received post-graduate training, and has presided over the Colloquium since that time. He has been writing and teaching in the field of American legal history for nearly fifty years and is the author of many books, including four volumes of The Common Law in Colonial America (Oxford), The Roots of American Bureaucracy, Americanization of the Common Law, and The Fourteenth Amendment.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents Introduction Part One: The Initial Settlements, 1607-1660 Chapter 1: The Chesapeake Chapter 2: New England Chapter 3: New Netherland Part Two: The Forging of Empire, 1660-1750 Chapter 4: The Crown's Imposition of the Common Law and Colonial Resistance Chapter 5: The End of Resistance and the Triumph of the Common Law Chapter 6: Ready Acceptance of the Common Law: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and the South Chapter 7: The Emergence of the Legal Profession Chapter 8: Property, Commercial Law, Labor Law, and Slavery Part Three: Altering Empire to Defeat France, 1689-1750 Chapter 9: The Local Structure of Power Chapter 10: The Law of Religion Chapter 11: Criminal and Regulatory Law Part Four: The Collapse of Empire, 1750-1776 Chapter 12: The Well-Functioning Empire of the Mid-Eighteenth Century Chapter 13: Weakening the Bonds of Empire Chapter 14: Testing the Bonds of Empire Chapter 15: Severing the Ties of Empire Chapter 16: An Historian's Postscript Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

"Nelson's historiographic goal, which he unquestionably succeeds at, is encouraging further research on how different structures of colonial government benefited different interests and social groups. Nelson offers up ample places for historians to delve deeper, focusing on specific geographic regions, temporal periods, or legal developments. There is clearly a great depth within this subject, and in that regard Nelson sets up other historians to do that work, while simultaneously drawing meaningful conclusions in a work committed to breadth." — Aileen McKinstry, H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online

"...fascinating details...compelling analyses..." — Justin A. Joyce, Early American Literature

"William Nelson's 'new narrative' of government and law in British North America is an excellent and much-needed intervention that will broaden our way of thinking about the origins of the American Union and, eventually, the creation of the American nation." — Annette Gordon-Reed, Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History and Harvard Law School Professor of History

"Nelson's study productively synthesizes American colonial and legal history, emphasizing local power in the colonial era and the gradual evolution of national institutions and the legal profession from local and regional roots. This valuable book will be important for law and graduate history students, as well as upper-level undergraduates in early American courses." — Sarah Barringer Gordon, Arlin M. Adams Professor of Law and Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania

"William Nelson's masterful study will forever banish the view that English law was transplanted to the American colonies. It shows that colonial courts produced striking legal diversity, and lawyers gradually forged convergence through strategic adaptations of the common law. Original, clear, and grounded in extensive research-this book is required reading for anyone interested in the origins of law and governance in early America." — Lauren Benton, Nelson O. Tyrone, Jr. Professor of History and Professor of Law, Vanderbilt University

From the Publisher