Statute Law in Colonial Virginia: Governors, Assemblymen, and the Revisals That Forged the Old Dominion

by Warren M. Billings

Overview

Between 1632 and 1748, Virginia’s General Assembly revised the colony’s statutes seven times. These revisals provide an invaluable opportunity to gauge how governors, councilors, and burgesses created a hybrid body of colonial statute law that would become the longest strand in the American legal fabric. In Statute Law in Colonial Virginia, Warren Billings presents a series of snapshots that depict the seven revisions of the corpus juris the General Assembly undertook. In so doing, he highlights the good, the corrupt, and the loathsome applications of broad legislative authority throughout the colonial era. Each revision was built on prior written law and embodies the members’ legal knowledge and statutory craftsmanship, revealing their use of an unbridled discretion to further the interests they represented. Statutes undergirded Virginia’s evolving legal culture, and by examining these revisals and their links, Billings casts light on the hybrid nature of Virginia statute law and its relation to English laws.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813945644
Publisher:	University of Virginia Press
Publication date:	02/22/2021
Series:	Early American Histories
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.25(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Warren M. Billings, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the University of New Orleans, is author of Magistrates and Pioneers: Essays in the History of American Law

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Preface
Author’s Note
1. Beginnings and the Acts of 1623/24
2. Sir John Harvey and the Revisal of 1632
3. Sir William Berkeley and the Revisal of 1643
4. A New Constitutional Order: The Revisals of 1652 and 1658
5. Safeguarding Virginia’s Autonomy: Sir William Berkeley, Francis Moryson, Henry Randolph, and the Revisal of 1662
6. The Long Road to the Revisal of 1705
7. Sir William Gooch’s Gift: The Revisal of 1748
8. Endings
Notes
Bibliographic Essay
Index

What People are Saying About This

Frank B. Atkinson

The preeminent historian of early Virginia, Warren Billings trains his penetrating lens on America’s oldest legislature and the statutory overhauls it accomplished during two eventful centuries. His fast-paced, highly readable account sheds new light on the pulls and tugs on both sides of the Atlantic that shaped this pivotal first experiment in American democracy and that influence law-making even today.

Mary Sarah Bilder

This book represents an important contribution on the substance of the Virginia revisals, a topic that no one has addressed in book-length form. The scholarship is completely sound, and Billings is the most important colonial Virginia legal historian and the only person who can make all the necessary connections.

Editorial Reviews

This thoroughly researched account, written by a master historian, casts new light on the hybrid nature of Virginia statute law and its connection with English law. It will interest advanced students and historians of US legal development.

CHOICE

Billings’s careful unfolding of this story not only adds to our understanding of earlyAmerican legal and political history, but it also provides a scholarly entry point toHening’s compilation of early Virginia statutes that researchers ignore at their ownperil.

Virginia Magazine of History and Biography

The preeminent historian of early Virginia, Warren Billings trains his penetrating lens on America’s oldest legislature and the statutory overhauls it accomplished during two eventful centuries. His fast-paced, highly readable account sheds new light on the pulls and tugs on both sides of the Atlantic that shaped this pivotal first experiment in American democracy and that influence law-making even today.

Frank B. Atkinson

This book represents an important contribution on the substance of the Virginia revisals, a topic that no one has addressed in book-length form. The scholarship is completely sound, and Billings is the most important colonial Virginia legal historian and the only person who can make all the necessary connections.

Mary Sarah Bilder

"This book represents an important contribution on the substance of the Virginia revisals, a topic that no one has addressed in book-length form. The scholarship is completely sound, and Billings is the most important colonial Virginia legal historian and the only person who can make all the necessary connections. "—Mary Sarah Bilder, Boston College Law School, author of Madison’s Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention

"The preeminent historian of early Virginia, Warren Billings trains his penetrating lens on America’s oldest legislature and the statutory overhauls it accomplished during two eventful centuries. His fast-paced, highly readable account sheds new light on the pulls and tugs on both sides of the Atlantic that shaped this pivotal first experiment in American democracy and that influence law-making even today. "—Frank B. Atkinson, former chairman of the federal Jamestown 400th Commemoration Commission, author of The Lion’s Den: A Story of American Renewal

From the Publisher