William Blackstone

For more information on Sir William Blackstone, visit Britannica.com.

The famous English jurist Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780) is remembered for his "Commentaries on the Laws of England", the first attempt since the 13th century to provide a comprehensive treatment of English law.

William Blackstone was born in Cheapside, London, on July 10, 1723, the posthumous son of Charles Blackstone, a merchant. He was educated at the Charterhouse School and at Oxford and entered the Middle Temple in London in 1740. He was elected a fellow of All Souls, Oxford, in 1744 and received the bachelor of civil law degree in 1745. Although he was admitted to the bar in 1746, he had limited success in practicing law and continued to hold several university posts and to lecture on English law. Shortly thereafter, Blackstone was appointed to the newly created Vinerian chair. In 1761 he was elected to Parliament and also received a patent of precedence giving him the rank of king's counsel. He resigned from his chair in 1766 due to his success at the bar that year, and in 1770 he was appointed a judge in the Court of Common Pleas, where he served, with no special distinction, until his death.

Commentaries on the Laws of England

Blackstone was the first since Henry de Bracton in the 13th century to present an encompassing treatment of English law. The Commentaries (1765-1769), which grew out of Blackstone's university lectures, is a very readable elementary text. Although its scheme of organization is borrowed from an earlier work by Sir Matthew Hale, Analysis of Law, it represents a radical departure from contemporary legal thought, which tended to treat the law as a catalog of unrelated writs and statutes. In Commentaries, Blackstone blended the intellectual traditions of the common law with those of 17th-and 18th-century English political philosophy.

Blackstone had only a vague grasp of systematic conceptions of law, and he was in fact frequently illogical, inconsistent, and uncritical. His purpose, however, was simply to provide literate men with entertaining and persuasive explanations of the existing legal order rather than to construct a critical and consistent jurisprudence. Commentaries performed a service for society and should be regarded more as a handbook for the layman than as a legal treatise.

In his treatment of law Blackstone argued a division between natural and positive (municipal) law by insisting on the existence of a natural law and maintaining that positive law which is not in accord with the principles of natural law is not law at all. But he held that there are few such principles and that most positive law concerns matters on which natural law is silent. Rights and wrongs are objects of law; rights are of persons or things, while wrongs are either public or private. Evidently, he regarded the law of gravitation, the law of England, and the law of nature as examples of the same principle, that is, the imposition of rules by a superior power on its subjects.

Blackstone's lack of precise terminology and use of loose phraseology result in contradictions. When he borrowed the scholastic definition of positive law, "a right or just ordinance commanding what is right and forbidding what is wrong," he deliberately struck out "right or just." Thus it is not clear whether he meant that whatever the law commands is right or that only laws that command what is morally right are really laws. He also reasserted the traditional equation of natural law with common law. Thus he did not directly face up to the problem of whether men only have those rights which the law gives them or whether law is simply the acknowledgment by the state of the natural rights inherent in each individual. According to Blackstone, Englishmen enjoyed only those rights which the common law proclaimed, but in fact Englishmen had created the common law to proclaim their rights.

Areas of Influence

Blackstone was active in the prison-reform movement, worked against the tendency to extend the list of capital offenses, and was critical of the poor laws. In some technical areas, such as contract laws, his thinking was in advance of that of most of his contemporaries.

He conceived his task as being educational reform rather than the building of a philosophic system. In the 18th century the Inns of Court had practically ceased to play their traditional role in legal education, and apprenticeship had largely replaced academic training. Blackstone gave the first regular university lectures on English law and sought not only to provide formal instruction for prospective lawyers but to present the basic elements of common law as an integral part of the academic education of English gentlemen.

In the United States, Blackstone's example contributed significantly to the development of law schools, and during the Revolutionary and postrevolutionary periods the Commentaries was the most widely read law text in America. After 1850 United States lawyers no longer tried to copy Blackstone, for living law was being shaped by the local institutions. By the middle of the 20th century few Americans had read Blackstone, even as a classic, but he remains a symbol for American lawyers.

Further Reading

There are two biographies of Blackstone: David A. Lockmiller, Sir William Blackstone (1938), and Lewis C. Warden, The Life of Blackstone (1938). The major critical treatments are A. V. Dicey, Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century (1905; 2d ed. 1914); Daniel J. Boorstin, The Mysterious Science of the Law: An Essay on Blackstone's Commentaries (1941); and "Blackstone on the British Constitution," in Ernest Barker, Essays on Government (1945; 2d ed. 1951). See also Theodore F. T. Plucknett, A Concise History of the Common Law (1929; 5th ed. 1956).

Blackstone, Sir William (1723-80). Blackstone is acknowledged as one of the greatest writers on the common law. He was both a practising barrister and an academic, and in 1758 was appointed as the first Vinerian professor of law at Oxford. His Commentaries have been one of the most authoritative and revered sources of English law.

Blackstone, William (1723-80) English jurist educated at Pembroke College, Oxford, and subsequently Vinerian Professor of Law at Oxford. His historical treatise on the common law, Commentaries on the Laws of England, was first published in four volumes over 1765-1769. He is remembered in philosophy chiefly as a central target of Jeremy Bentham.

The groundwork for U.S. jurisprudence lies in a four-volume eighteenth-century publication by British legal commentator Sir William Blackstone. Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England provided a systematic analysis of English common law. Published between 1765 and 1769, the treatise was an exhaustive compilation of Blackstone's Oxford University lectures on law. Commentaries was unprecedented in scope and purpose, and profoundly influenced the development of common law and legal education in England and the United States.

Born July 10, 1723, Blackstone was the son of Mary Blackstone and Charles Blackstone, of London. Blackstone's father, a silk merchant, died before Blackstone was born; his mother died while he was a young boy. Raised by an older brother and tutored by an uncle, Blackstone attended Charterhouse and Pembroke College, at Oxford University, where his education included a thorough exposure to mathematics and logic. Blackstone entered All Souls College, Oxford, in 1743, and became a fellow in 1744.

In preparation for a law practice, Blackstone received a civil law degree in 1745, and became a barrister in 1746. In 1750, he became a doctor of civil law. One year later, he was selected as an assessor (judge) of Chancellor's Court.

In 1755, after three years of a lusterless law practice, Blackstone decided to devote all of his time to teaching law at Oxford. His first book, published in 1757, was titled An Analysis of the Laws of England. In 1758, Blackstone was named Oxford's Vinerian Professor of English Law, receiving the first chair of common law ever established at the university. Blackstone's lectures were well received, providing students with a comprehensive introduction to the laws of England.

The success of his lectures enhanced Blackstone's career. In 1761 he became a bencher (supervisor and lecturer) at Oxford's Middle Temple. The same year, he was elected to Par- liament, where he served for seven years— although, according to most historians, he was not an especially ambitious or effective politician. Also in 1761, Blackstone married Sarah Clitherow, with whom he had nine children.

In 1765, Blackstone published the first of his four volumes of Commentaries. The treatise discussed the cases, rules, and legal principles outlined in his popular Oxford lectures. Each volume concentrated on a particular area of law—personal rights, property rights, torts, or criminal law. As Blackstone analyzed the laws, he also revealed their relationship to a higher power. Throughout his Commentaries, Blackstone wove the concept of "natural law," or God's laws imposed on humankind.

Some critics maintain that Blackstone's view of British law was misleading because a logical, cohesive legal system simply did not exist at the time he was writing. Also, they argue that although Blackstone's writing style was graceful, he sometimes treated legal terms loosely. Yet even his harshest critics concede that Blackstone's effort to synthesize English law was indeed impressive, as was the effect of his treatise in his country and beyond.

Blackstone's Commentaries was particularly influential in the United States as the new nation sought to establish its own laws and legal system. Although Blackstone is no longer cited by practicing attorneys—his importance in the United States decreased dramatically during the twentieth century—he remains a revered figure in U.S. law. Over thirty editions of Commentaries have been printed in the United States and England.

In 1770, Blackstone became judge of the Court of Common Pleas and was knighted. He died on February 14, 1780, at age fifty-seven.

Quotes:

"The Royal Navy of England hath ever been its greatest defense and ornament; it is its ancient and natural strength; the floating bulwark of the island."

"The public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual's private rights."

"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer"

"In all tyrannical governments the supreme magistracy, or the right both of making and of enforcing the laws, is vested in one and the same man, or one and the same body of men; and wherever these two powers are united together, there can be no public liberty."

"The public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individuals private rights."

"So great moreover is the regard of the law for private property, that it will not authorize the least violation of it; no, not even for the general good of the whole community."

See more famous quotes by Sir William Blackstone

For other uses, see William Blackstone (disambiguation).

Portrait of Sir William Blackstone by Thomas Gainsborough, 1774.

Sir William Blackstone (10 July 1723 – 14 February 1780) was an English judge, jurist and professor who produced the historical and analytic treatise on the common law entitled Commentaries on the Laws of England, first published in four volumes over 1765–1769. It had an extraordinary success, reportedly bringing the author £14,000, and still remains an important source on classical views of the common law and its principles.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Blackstone and Property Jurisprudence 3 Blackstone and anti-Catholicism 4 Notes 5 References 6 See also 7 External links

Biography

He received his education at Charterhouse School and at Pembroke College, Oxford. In 1743 he was elected fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and [he] was called to the bar as a barrister at the Middle Temple in 1746. After practicing in the courts of Westminster for several years without great success, in 1753 he retired to Oxford where he launched a pioneering private lecture course on the laws and government of England (not then taught at either English university). In 1758 he was elected unopposed to the new chair in English Law endowed by the will of Charles Viner (who had died in 1756), delivering his first lecture as foundation Vinerian Professor on 25 October 1758. In 1761 Blackstone was appointed Principal of New Inn Hall (now St. Peter's College, Oxford), a position which he held until 1766. Blackstone lived at Priory Place (later Castle Priory) in Wallingford, and is buried at St Peter's Church in the town.

In 1761 Blackstone won election as a Member of Parliament for Hindon and received a patent of precedence at the bar (equivalent to the rank of king's counsel). Blackstone's "political views were those of the Old Whigs and his ideals were those of the Glorious Revolution of 1688".^[1] He was knighted in 1770 and appointed a Justice of the Common Pleas.

The four volumes of the Commentaries, first published between 1765 and 1769 in Oxford and first issued in an American edition in 1771, won instant recognition for their able synthesis of the often bewildering doctrines that made up the common law and for their elegant writing style. Leading American attorneys who first learned their law by reading Blackstone include Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln. Thomas Jefferson at first admired Blackstone's learning and eloquence, but later denounced his treatise as "honeyed Mansfieldism," a reference to the great conservative English jurist Lord Mansfield.

Sir William Blackstone statue located in Washington, D.C.

In addition to the Commentaries, Blackstone published the first scholarly edition of Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest. He also wrote poetry, numerous pamphlets on university and national politics, two architectural manuscripts, and other legal treatises. Blackstone and his work occasionally appear in literature. For example, Blackstone receives mention in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. A passing reference to the Commentaries is also to be found in Francis Parkman's The Oregon Trail. A bust of Blackstone is a typical ornament of a lawyer's office in early Perry Mason novels, and in Anatomy of a Murder. Blackstone's Commentaries are also mentioned in Charles Portis's comic novel, The Dog of the South. It is also mentioned in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird as the tool used to teach Calpurnia, a black woman, how to read. Blackstone wrote his books on common law shortly before the United States Constitution was written. Many terms and phrases, particularly the term Pursuit of Happiness, used by the framers were derived from Blackstone's works.

U.S. courts frequently quote Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England as the definitive pre-Revolutionary War source of common law; in particular, the United States Supreme Court quotes from Blackstone's work whenever they wish to engage in historical discussion that goes back to the era of the nation's founding, to illuminate the legal and intellectual culture that helped to shape the intent of the Framers of the Constitution). His work has been used most forcefully as of late by Justice Clarence Thomas. U.S. and other common law courts mention with strong approval Blackstone's formulation also known as Blackstone's ratio popularly stated as "Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" — although he did not first express the principle.

The Virginia lawyer and judge St. George Tucker prepared his own edition of Blackstone's Commentaries, adapting the treatise to American needs and conditions. His version was widely used for much of the nineteenth century.

Blackstone's work was more often synthetic than original, but his writing was organized, clear, and dignified, which brings his great work within the category of general literature. He also had a turn for neat and polished verse, of which he gave proof in The Lawyer's Farewell to his Muse.

Blackstone

Blackstone and Property Jurisprudence

Blackstone's characterization of property rights as "sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe," has often been quoted in judicial opinions and secondary legal literature as the dominant Western concept of property. In spite of the frequency with which this conception is quoted, however, the phrase is often presented without taking into account the greater context of Blackstone's thought on the subject of property. Blackstone likely offered the statement as a rhetorical flourish to begin his discussion, given that even in his age, individual property rights were not sole and absolute. Property owners must rely on the enforcement powers of the state, in any event, for the realization of their rights.

Blackstone and anti-Catholicism

William Blackstone's Commentaries summarized his attitude toward Roman Catholics as follows:

As to papists, what has been said of the Protestant dissenters would hold equally strong for a general toleration of them; provided their separation was founded only upon difference of opinion in religion, and their principles did not also extend to a subversion of the civil government. If once they could be brought to renounce the supremacy of the pope, they might quietly enjoy their seven sacraments, their purgatory, and auricular confession; their worship of reliques and images; nay even their transubstantiation. But while they acknowledge a foreign power, superior to the sovereignty of the kingdom, they cannot complain if the laws of that kingdom will not treat them upon the footing of good subjects.

— Bl. Comm. IV, c.4 ss. iii.2, p. *54

Notes

1. ^ Gareth Jones, 'Introduction' in Jones (ed.), The Sovereignty of the Law. Selections from Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (Macmillan, 1973), p. xx.

References

• This article incorporates public domain text from: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J. M. Dent & sons; New York, E. P. Dutton.
• The leading modern biography is Wilfrid Prest, William Blackstone: Law and Letters in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). ISBN 0199550298.
• Daniel J. Boorstin, The Mysterious Science of the Law: An Essay on Blackstone's Commentaries showing how Blackstone, employing eighteenth-century ideas of science, religion, history, aesthetics, and philosophy, made of the law at once a conservative and mysterious science. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1941; reissued with a new foreword, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). ISBN 0226064980.
• Wilfrid Prest has also edited The Letters of Sir William Blackstone 1744-1780 (London, Selden Society, 2006), ISBN 0854231900, and more recently a collection of essays on Blackstone and his Commentaries: Biography, Law, History (Oxford, Hart Publishing, 2009), ISBN 9781841137964.

See also

• Penitentiary Act

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: William Blackstone

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: William Blackstone

• Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, from the Avalon Project at Yale Law School
• A Biography of William Blackstone (1723 - 1780)
• Royal Berkshire History: Sir William Blackstone

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)