William Blackstone

William Blackstone wrote the most important legal book in the history of the English-speaking world — the Commentaries on the Laws of England (4 volumes, 1765–1769), a comprehensive, systematic, and beautifully written exposition of English common law that transformed legal education, shaped the American Constitution, and established the framework within which English and American lawyers have understood their legal system for over 250 years. Before Blackstone, the common law was a maze of precedents, statutes, customs, and judicial opinions that could be mastered only by years of apprenticeship in the Inns of Court. After Blackstone, it was a system — organised, explained, and set forth in prose that anyone with an education could understand. The Commentaries democratised legal knowledge and made the law accessible to the general public for the first time.

All Souls

William Blackstone was born in London in 1723, the posthumous son of a silk merchant. He was educated at Charterhouse School and Pembroke College, Oxford, was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1746, and was elected a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, in 1744. He practised law briefly and unsuccessfully — he was, by all accounts, an indifferent advocate — and turned instead to teaching.

In 1753, he began delivering private lectures on English law at Oxford — the first time English law had been taught systematically at either English university. (The existing chairs of law at Oxford and Cambridge were devoted to civil law — Roman law as codified by Justinian — not the common law.) In 1758, he was appointed the first Vinerian Professor of English Law at Oxford, a position created specifically for him.

The Commentaries

The Commentaries on the Laws of England grew out of Blackstone’s Oxford lectures. The four volumes covered:

1. Of the Rights of Persons (1765) — the law of personal status, including the rights of the Crown, Parliament, clergy, husband and wife, parent and child, and master and servant
2. Of the Rights of Things (1766) — property law
3. Of Private Wrongs (1768) — civil remedies and the court system
4. Of Public Wrongs (1769) — criminal law

The achievement was extraordinary. Blackstone took the vast, uncodified, historically accumulated body of English law and organised it into a rational system, explaining each doctrine’s origins, development, and current application in prose of remarkable clarity and elegance. He wrote for the educated layman as well as the professional lawyer, and his literary skill — Blackstone was an excellent writer, trained in the classical tradition — made the Commentaries a pleasure to read as well as a reference work.

American Influence

The Commentaries had their greatest influence in America. In colonial and early republican America, where trained lawyers were scarce and law schools did not yet exist, Blackstone was often the only legal text available. Edmund Burke said that the American colonies had sold nearly as many copies of the Commentaries as England itself. The drafters of the Constitution — Hamilton, Madison, Jay — were deeply influenced by Blackstone’s analysis of the separation of powers, the rights of individuals, and the structure of government. Abraham Lincoln said that he learned the law by reading Blackstone.

Criticism

Blackstone’s critics have been numerous. Jeremy Bentham, in his Fragment on Government (1776), attacked the Commentaries for their complacency, their reverence for existing institutions, and their failure to subject the law to rational criticism. Bentham accused Blackstone of treating everything that existed as necessarily right — a charge that has been echoed by subsequent reformers. Modern legal scholars have criticised Blackstone for oversimplifying complex areas of law, for conservative bias, and for presenting the common law as more systematic and more rational than it actually was.

These criticisms have merit, but they do not diminish the Commentaries’ historical importance. Blackstone did not create a perfect system; he created a readable one, and in doing so he made the law accessible to a democratic public.

Collecting Blackstone

Commentaries on the Laws of England (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1765–1769, 4 volumes, quarto) in first edition is one of the most important English books of the eighteenth century and a major collecting target. The first American edition (Robert Bell, Philadelphia, 1771–1772) is separately collected and is significant in the history of American publishing. Subsequent editions — particularly those annotated by Tucker (1803), Christian (1793–1795), and Chitty (1826) — are also of interest. The Clarendon Press first edition in contemporary binding is the standard collecting copy.