Agents of Empire
Agents of Empire

Author: Sean Gailmard

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2024-05-02

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 100931694X

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To understand the foundations of American political institutions, it's necessary to understand the rationale for British colonial institutions that survived the empire. Political institutions in England's American colonies were neither direct imports from England, nor home-grown creations of autonomous colonists. Instead, they emerged from efforts of the English Crown to assert control over their colonies amid limited English state and military capacity. Agents of Empire explores the strategic dilemmas facing a constrained crown in its attempts to assert control. The study argues that colonial institutions emerged from the crown's management of authority delegated to agents-first companies and proprietors establishing colonies; then imperial officials governing the polities they created. The institutions remaining from these strategic dynamics form the building blocks of federalism, legislative power, separation of powers, judicial review, and other institutions that comprise the American polity today.

The Transatlantic Constitution
The Transatlantic Constitution

Author: Mary Sarah Bilder

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2008-03-31

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 9780674020948

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Departing from traditional approaches to colonial legal history, Mary Sarah Bilder argues that American law and legal culture developed within the framework of an evolving, unwritten transatlantic constitution that lawyers, legislators, and litigants on both sides of the Atlantic understood. The central tenet of this constitution—that colonial laws and customs could not be repugnant to the laws of England but could diverge for local circumstances—shaped the legal development of the colonial world. Focusing on practices rather than doctrines, Bilder describes how the pragmatic and flexible conversation about this constitution shaped colonial law: the development of the legal profession; the place of English law in the colonies; the existence of equity courts and legislative equitable relief; property rights for women and inheritance laws; commercial law and currency reform; and laws governing religious establishment. Using as a case study the corporate colony of Rhode Island, which had the largest number of appeals of any mainland colony to the English Privy Council, she reconstructs a largely unknown world of pre-Constitutional legal culture.

The Aristocracy of the Long Robe
The Aristocracy of the Long Robe

Author: Jack M. Sosin

Publisher: Praeger

Published: 1989-09-26

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13:

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Is judicial review constitutionally required or even authorized? Can it be said whether the federal courts exercise this power with the consent of the electorate? Sosin addresses these challenging questions in the broad context of the Anglo-American historical experience. He examines the evolution of courts of judicature and legislatures and the contests for power that were waged from the seventeenth to eighteenth century. The origins of the English court system and the establishment of common law are first described. The author traces the rise in judicial and parliamentary power that occurred with the erosion of the royal prerogative and discusses the constitutional and legal heritage that provided the framework for law, courts, and legislatures in colonial America. Following an examination of political, legislative, and legal development during the colonial period, Sosin looks at the philosophical and ideological controversies that influenced the framing of the Constitution, particulary the conflicting views of the proper relationship between the legislature and judiciary. Despite the emphatic opposition voiced by some framers to giving judges the power to overturn legislative action by ruling on the constitutionality of federal laws, the Supreme Court was able to declare itself the final arbiter and ultimate interpreter of the Constitution as early as the first decade of the nineteenth century. The author's analysis indicates that the Court's assumption of the power of judicial review was neither inevitable politically nor the logical result of the founders desire to limit government and protect the rights of individuals against interferences by public authority. Echoing early English and American political figures, Sosin asks whether this expanded, arbitrary judicial power can be considered appropriate in a representative democracy. The product of meticulous research and careful historical analysis, this provocative study will be relevant reading for a variety of courses in American government, political science, and history.