John Phillip Reid addresses the central constitutional issues that divided the American colonists from their English legislators: the authority to tax, the authority to legislate, the security of rights, the nature of law, the foundation of constitutional government in custom and contractarian theory, and the search for a constitutional settlement.

Brilliantly executed....Reid's central argument is reserved for his contentions about how the American Revolution occurred within the British constitutional framework. Crucial is his assertion that the eighteenth-century British constitution itself was a vital crossroad between the old constitution of 'customary powers, with rights secured as property' and the newer constitution 'of sovereign command and of arbitrary parliamentary supremacy.' The conflict between the two was profound and ultimately irreconcilable as the Americans, with occasional misgivings and uncertainties, sustained the old and Parliament lurched toward the new...This book (has) a compelling intellectual force that deserves the closest scrutiny.' -George M. Curtis III, American Historical Review

Using the British Empire as a case study, this succinct study argues that the establishment of overseas settlements in America created a problem of constitutional organization. The failure to resolve the resulting tensions led to the thirteen continental colonies seceding from the empire in 1776. Challenging those historians who have assumed that the British had the law on their side during the debates that led to the American Revolution, this volume argues that the empire had long exhibited a high degree of constitutional multiplicity, with each colony having its own discrete constitution. Contending that these constitutions cannot be conflated with the metropolitan British constitution, it argues that British refusal to accept the legitimacy of colonial understandings of the sanctity of the many colonial constitutions and the imperial constitution was the critical element leading to the American Revolution.

This work addresses the central constitutional issues that divided the American colonists from their English legislators: the authority to tax, the authority to legislate, the security of rights, the nature of law, and the foundation of constitutional government in custom and contractarian theory.

John Phillip Reid addresses the central constitutional issues that divided the American colonists from their English legislators: the authority to tax, the authority to legislate, the security of rights, the nature of law, the foundation of constitutional government in custom and contractarian theory, and the search for a constitutional settlement.

American Revolution is a Pulitzer Prize awarded history which deals with legal and political aspects of the American Revolution. The American Revolution began and ended with the political act or acts by which British sovereignty over the thirteen English colonies in North America was definitely repudiated. All else was nothing but cause or effect of this act. Of the causes, some were economic, some social, others constitutional. But the Revolution itself was none of these; not social, nor economic, nor even constitutional; it was a political act, and such an act cannot be both constitutional and revolutionary; the terms are mutually exclusive. So long as American opposition to alleged grievances was constitutional it was in no sense revolutionary. The moment it became revolutionary it ceased to be constitutional. When was that moment reached? The Problem The Precedents The Realm and the Dominions The Precedents Natural and Fundamental Law Taxation and Virtual Representation The Charters