THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF LAW IN AMERICA VOL 1: EARLY AMERICA (1580-1815). Ed by Michael Grossberg and Christopher Tomlins Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (www.cambridge.org), 2008. xviii + 739 pp. ISBN 9780521803052. £75.
| Author | W Hamilton Bryson |
| Date | 01 May 2009 |
| DOI | 10.3366/E1364980909001723 |
| Published date | 01 May 2009 |
| Pages | 369-371 |
The book under review is a survey of the influence of law on mainland British North America up to about 1815. Chapter 1, by Anthony Pagden, discusses the seventeenth and eighteenth century legal explanations for the colonisation of North American. These arguments were not disinterested but varied over time as the political exigencies required, from settlement to defence against other European nations to independence from Great Britain. (On p 19, “St James River” should be “James River”.) Katherine Hermes contributes a chapter on the legal practices of those Indians who did not assimilate into the new order, and their legal interactions with the colonists. However, the Indians kept no records, and therefore little is actually known except what is seen through the eyes of the colonists until the very end of the period covered by this book, and that is about the Cherokees only. Mary Bilder analyses the political institutions of the period “focusing on governance and authority”. This theme is further elaborated in Richard Ross's essay on “legal communication and imperial governance”.
Many of the contributors move easily from colony to colony, and this can mislead the reader into a sense of legal uniformity. But, in fact, the colonies had quite independent and different legal systems even though, as time went by, and some more and some less, they began to be up-to-date by contemporary English standards. David Konig's chapter rightly and best describes the differences. This legal diversity is also explained in Michael Meranze's chapter on colonial criminal law and its administration. Next, Christopher Tomlins gives a good legal account of labour law. Sally Hadden then discusses the evolution of the law of slavery during the period covered by this book.
Holly Brewer's chapter on family law begins with the straw man of Tapping Reeve's statement that men owned their wives, children, and apprentices, which is of course nonsense. She says, incorrectly, that younger sons did not have the ability to own land (292), and her statement that the assignability of an indenture of service created a “property” right to the servant (297) confuses the law of obligations and the law of property. Brewer observes that, in England (as well as in Virginia), women had more freedoms and rights “than the common law supposedly allowed” (300). However, considering what the eighteenth-century equity courts were doing in favour of married women's property rights, this is not surprising...
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