Description The colonies that comprised pre-revolutionary America had thirteen legal systems and governments.
In 1961, he founded the Legal History Colloquium at NYU Law School, where nearly 100 younger scholars have held fellowships and received post-graduate trai.
Nelson is Judge Edward Weinfeld Professor of Law, New York University.
About the Author William E.
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.
Ultimately, Nelson shows that the colonies\' gradual embrace of the Common law was instrumental to the establishment of the United States.
In turn, laypeople came to accept constitutional doctrine by the time of independence in 1776.
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 practice, the triumph of the Common law over competing approaches gave lawyers more authority than governing officials.
E Pluribus Unum highlights the political context in which the Common law developed and how it influenced the United States Constitution.
But, while the Common law emerged as the dominant system across the colonies, its effects were far from what English rulers had envisioned.
Over time, though, the British crown standardized legal procedure in an effort to more uniformly and efficiently exert control over the Empire.
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.
From their inception, the colonies exercised a range of approaches to the law.
Nelson explains how this diverse array of legal orders gradually converged over time, laying the groundwork for the founding of the United States.
Given their diversity, how did they evolve into a single nation? In E Pluribus Unum, the eminent legal historian William E.
Description The colonies that comprised pre-revolutionary America had thirteen legal systems and governments
