William Blackstone (1723-1780) · AuthorAuthor
William Blackstone
1723-1780 · English jurist, first Vinerian Professor of English Law at Oxford, and later a judge
About William Blackstone
Sir William Blackstone (1723–1780) was born in London, the posthumous son of a silk merchant, and educated at Charterhouse and Pembroke College, Oxford. He became a fellow of All Souls in 1744 and was called to the bar in 1746, but his practice was modest, and in 1753 he began giving the first university lectures on English common law at Oxford. In 1758 he was elected the first Vinerian Professor of English Law, a chair founded under the will of Charles Viner. He sat in the House of Commons from 1761, published the four volumes of the Commentaries between 1765 and 1769, and was appointed a justice of the Court of Common Pleas in 1770, serving there until his death in 1780.
On this site
Commentaries on the Laws of EnglandWilliam Blackstone
1765-1769 · 18th Century · Political Theory
Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, published at Oxford by the Clarendon Press in four volumes between 1765 and 1769, grew out of the lectures he gave at Oxford from 1753 and as first Vinerian Professor from 1758. It was the first full account of English law written for educated readers rather than for practising lawyers, arranged as a reasoned system instead of a collection of cases.