Commentaries on the Laws of England, Volume 2: A Facsimile of the First Edition of 1765-1769

By William Blackstone

Book Overview

Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769) stands as the first great effort to reduce the English common law to a unified and rational system. Blackstone demonstrated that the English law as a system of justice was comparable to Roman law and the civil law of the Continent. Clearly and elegantly written, the work achieved immediate renown and exerted a powerful influence on legal education in England and in America which was to last into the late nineteenth century. The book is regarded not only as a legal classic but as a literary masterpiece.

Previously available only in an expensive hardcover set, Commentaries on the Laws of England is published here in four separate volumes, each one affordably priced in a paperback edition. These works are facsimiles of the eighteenth-century first edition and are undistorted by later interpolations. Each volume deals with a particular field of law and carries with it an introduction by a leading contemporary scholar.

Introducing this second volume, Of the Rights of Things, A. W. Brian Simpson discusses the history of Blackstone's theory of various aspects of property rights-real property, feudalism, estates, titles, personal property, and contracts-and the work of his predecessors.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226055418
• ISBN13: 9780226055411
• Release Date: November 1979
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 544 Pages
• Weight: 1.71 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.9" x 9.0"