It makes for essential reading.

William E. Nelson here proposes a new beginning in the study of colonial legal history. Examining all archival legal material for the period 1607-1776 and synthesizing existing scholarship in a four-volume series, The Common Law in Colonial America shows how the legal systems of Britain's thirteen North American colonies--initially established in response to divergent political, economic, and religious initiatives--slowly converged into a common American legal order that differed substantially from English common law.

William E. Nelson's first volume of the four-volume The Common Law of Colonial America (2008) established a new benchmark for study of colonial era legal history. Drawing from both a rich archival base and existing scholarship on the topic, the first volume demonstrated how the legal systems of Britain's thirteen North American colonies-each of which had unique economies, political structures, and religious institutions -slowly converged into a common law order that differed substantially from English common law. The first volume focused on how the legal systems of the Chesapeake colonies--Virginia and Maryland--contrasted with those of the New England colonies and traced these dissimilarities from the initial settlement of America until approximately 1660. In this new volume, Nelson brings the discussion forward, covering the years from 1660, which saw the Restoration of the British monarchy, to 1730. In particular, he analyzes the impact that an increasingly powerful British government had on the evolution of the common law in the New World. As the reach of the Crown extended, Britain imposed far more restrictions than before on the new colonies it had chartered in the Carolinas and the middle Atlantic region. The government's intent was to ensure that colonies' laws would align more tightly with British law. Nelson examines how the newfound coherence in British colonial policy led these new colonies to develop common law systems that corresponded more closely with one another, eliminating much of the variation that socio-economic differences had created in the earliest colonies. As this volume reveals, these trends in governance ultimately resulted in a tension between top-down pressures from Britain for a more uniform system of laws and bottom-up pressures from colonists to develop their own common law norms and preserve their own distinctive societies. Authoritative and deeply researched, the volumes in The Common Law of Colonial America will become the foundational resource for anyone interested the history of American law before the Revolution.

Drawing on groundbreaking and overwhelmingly extensive research into local court records, The Common Law in Colonial America proposes a "new beginning" in the study of colonial legal history, as it charts the course of the common law in Early America, to reveal how the models of law that emerged differed drastically from that of the English common law. In this first volume, Nelson explores how the law of the Chesapeake colonies--Virginia and Maryland--differed from the New England colonies--Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, New Haven, Plymouth, and Rhode Island--and looks at the differences between the colonial legal systems within the two regions, from their initial settlement until approximately 1660.

William E. Nelson's first volume of the four-volume The Common Law of Colonial America (2008) established a new benchmark for study of colonial era legal history. Drawing from both a rich archival base and existing scholarship on the topic, the first volume demonstrated how the legal systems of Britain's thirteen North American colonies-each of which had unique economies, political structures, and religious institutions -slowly converged into a common law order that differed substantially from English common law. The first volume focused on how the legal systems of the Chesapeake colonies--Virginia and Maryland--contrasted with those of the New England colonies and traced these dissimilarities from the initial settlement of America until approximately 1660. In this new volume, Nelson brings the discussion forward, covering the years from 1660, which saw the Restoration of the British monarchy, to 1730. In particular, he analyzes the impact that an increasingly powerful British government had on the evolution of the common law in the New World. As the reach of the Crown extended, Britain imposed far more restrictions than before on the new colonies it had chartered in the Carolinas and the middle Atlantic region. The government's intent was to ensure that colonies' laws would align more tightly with British law. Nelson examines how the newfound coherence in British colonial policy led these new colonies to develop common law systems that corresponded more closely with one another, eliminating much of the variation that socio-economic differences had created in the earliest colonies. As this volume reveals, these trends in governance ultimately resulted in a tension between top-down pressures from Britain for a more uniform system of laws and bottom-up pressures from colonists to develop their own common law norms and preserve their own distinctive societies. Authoritative and deeply researched, the volumes in The Common Law of Colonial America will become the foundational resource for anyone interested the history of American law before the Revolution.

This study analyzes the development of criminal law during the first several generations of American life. Its comparison of the substantive and procedural law among the colonies reveals the similarities and differences between the New England and the Chesapeake colonies. Bradley Chapin addresses the often-debated question of the “reception” of English law and makes estimates of the relative weight of the sources and methods of early American law. A main theme of his book is that colonial legislators and judges achieved a significant reform of the English criminal law at a time when a parallel movement in England failed. The analysis is made specific and concrete by statistics that show patterns of prosecutions and crime rates. In addition to the exciting and convincing theme of a “lost period” of great creativity in American criminal law, Chapin gives a wealth of detail on statutory and common-law rulings, noteworthy criminal cases, and judicial views of how the law was to be administered. He provides social and economic explanations of shifts and peculiarities in the law, using carefully arranged evidence from the records. His treatment of the Quaker cases in Massachusetts and the witchcraft prosecutions in New England throws new light on those frequently misunderstood episodes. Chapin's book will be of interest not only to scholars working in the field but also to anyone curious about early American legal history.