Five-minute digest

Commentaries on the Laws of England

William Blackstone

Summary

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. Volume I treats the Rights of Persons, II the Rights of Things (property), III Private Wrongs (civil remedies and procedure) and IV Public Wrongs (crimes). The library text is a selection: the Introduction and Book I from the first edition of 1765. Books II to IV are not included. The Introduction has four sections. The first, Blackstone's inaugural Vinerian lecture of 25 October 1758, argues that every English gentleman, as juror, magistrate, legislator or landowner, ought to know the laws of his country, and that the universities should teach them. The second, on the nature of laws in general, describes law as a rule of action prescribed by a superior: the law of nature, coeval with mankind and dictated by God, and the revealed law of Scripture are the foundations, and no human law should contradict them. The third distinguishes the unwritten common law, known through the decisions of courts and the customs of the realm, from statute law, and describes how equity and the civil and canon laws fit in. The fourth surveys the countries subject to English law: Wales, Scotland after the Union, Ireland, the islands, and the American plantations, which he classes as conquered or ceded lands where the common law did not automatically apply. Book I begins with the absolute rights of individuals: personal security (life, limbs, body, health and reputation), personal liberty, and private property, protected by auxiliary rights such as Parliament, limits on the royal prerogative, access to the courts, petition, and arms for defence. Chapter 2 describes Parliament, whose power Blackstone calls so great that what it does no authority upon earth can undo. Chapters 3 to 8 treat the king: his title, family, councils, duties, prerogative (the king can do no wrong, and never dies) and revenue, which includes the custody of idiots and lunatics. Chapters 9 to 13 describe magistrates, aliens and natives, the clergy, the civil state of nobility and commons, and the army and navy. The private relations follow: master and servant, husband and wife (the doctrine of coverture, by which husband and wife are one person in law), parent and child, and guardian and ward. The final chapter treats corporations. The Commentaries were reprinted in Philadelphia in 1771 to 1772 and became the chief textbook of law in the young United States, read by the founding generation and by later students including Abraham Lincoln.

Top Lessons

Human law rests on natural and revealed law
Blackstone begins his account of English law with God. The law of nature, dictated by God and binding everywhere, and the revealed law of Scripture are the two foundations; human laws regulate matters left indifferent and must not contradict them. Positive law, on this view, is a servant of a higher order.
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- Freedom and the Law, Lesson: Law discovered, not made
  Law discovered, not made. Leoni draws on Roman private law and the English common law to argue that much law can be found in the settled expectations of a people and stated by judges and jurists, rather than invented by a legislature. The idea has deep roots in the medieval belief that the king must keep the law of the land, not create it.
- An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Summary
  Locke says in the Epistle to the Reader that the Essay began when five or six friends meeting in his rooms found themselves at a standstill over questions of morality and revealed religion, and he proposed that they first examine what objects human understanding is fitted to deal with. Nearly twenty years later the result was a long, patient survey of where ideas come from, how they combine, how words signify them and how far knowledge and probable belief can reach. Book I attacks the doctrine of innate principl...
- Magna Carta, Lesson: The king under the law
  The king under the law. Clauses 39 and 40 bind the king himself: he may not move against a freeman except by lawful judgment or the law of the land, and he may not sell or delay justice. The charter's lasting fame rests on this idea that even the highest ruler acts within settled law.
- An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, No Innate Practical Principles
  that certain and unavoidable punishment will attend the breach of it For if men can be ignorant or doubtful of what is innate innate principles are insisted on and urged to no purpose truth and certainty the things pretended are not at all secured by them but men are in the same uncertain floating estate with as without them An evident indubitable knowledge of unavoidable punishment great enough to make the transgression very uneligible must accompany an innate law unless with an innate law they can suppose an i...
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Contents
  Battle Showing Off Not Amiss Mary Tom Contemplating Dampened Ardor Youth Boyhood Using the Barlow The Church Necessities Tom as a Sunday-School Hero The Prize At Church The Model Boy The Church Choir A Side Show Result of Playing in Church The Pinch-Bug Sid Dentistry Huckleberry Finn Mother Hopkins Result of Tom s Truthfulness Tom as an Artist Interrupted Courtship The Master Vain Pleading Tail Piece The Grave in the Woods Tom Meditates Robin Hood and his Foe Death of Robin Hood Midnight Tom s Mode of Egress Tom...
Three absolute rights of every Englishman
Book I, ch. 1 names personal security, personal liberty and private property as the absolute rights that society exists to protect. Blackstone shows that these rights would be words only without auxiliary rights: Parliament, limits on the crown, the courts, petition and arms. Rights need institutions to guard them.
Related across the library
- Prince Caspian, Lesson: Humble kingship
  Humble kingship. When Aslan asks Caspian whether he feels himself fit to be king, Caspian says he is only a boy, and Aslan tells him that this is exactly why he is fit. Caspian is also reminded that he comes from Adam and Eve, which is both a dignity and a humbling. Lewis's picture of a good ruler begins with humility.
- Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5
  There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance In her madness Ophelia distributes flowers whose meanings comment on the court's grief and guilt.
- The Bacchae and Other Plays, Lesson: Seeing can be a trap
  Seeing can be a trap. Pentheus wants to see what is forbidden, and Dionysus uses that desire against him. Curiosity becomes exposure.
- The New York Trilogy, Lesson: Writing is both record and trap
  Writing is both record and trap. Notebooks, reports and manuscripts promise evidence, yet they also imprison their writers in systems of interpretation. The book treats writing as survival, surveillance and appropriation at once.
- Beyond Good and Evil, Lesson: Moral values have histories, and their history is not innocent
  Moral values have histories, and their history is not innocent. The contrast of master and slave morality claims that 'good' and 'evil' have different origins in different social positions. Readers can test the genealogical method without accepting Nietzsche's contempt for herd morality or his aristocratic politics.
Law as an inheritance of precedent
The common law is not a code enacted at a single time but a body of customs known through the decisions of judges, who are bound to follow precedent unless it is clearly absurd or unjust. Blackstone presents this as a source of stability and of liberty, since no single ruler can remake the law at will.
Related across the library
- Freedom and the Law, Lesson: Law discovered, not made
  Law discovered, not made. Leoni draws on Roman private law and the English common law to argue that much law can be found in the settled expectations of a people and stated by judges and jurists, rather than invented by a legislature. The idea has deep roots in the medieval belief that the king must keep the law of the land, not create it.
- Leviathan, Part I, Ch. VI, 'Of the Interiour Beginnings of Voluntary Motions'
  Definitions of the passions as forms of appetite and aversion, including fear, grief, anxiety and the 'Panique Terror' of crowds.
- An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, No Innate Practical Principles
  that certain and unavoidable punishment will attend the breach of it For if men can be ignorant or doubtful of what is innate innate principles are insisted on and urged to no purpose truth and certainty the things pretended are not at all secured by them but men are in the same uncertain floating estate with as without them An evident indubitable knowledge of unavoidable punishment great enough to make the transgression very uneligible must accompany an innate law unless with an innate law they can suppose an i...
- The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Chapter IX. Reflection—meditation-ILL-Temper—sulkiness—determination
  for a serviceable purpose For instance we voluntarily close our eyes when we do not wish to see any object and we are apt to close them when we reject a proposition as if we could not or would not see it or when we think about something horrible We raise our eyebrows when we wish to see quickly all round us and we often do the same when we earnestly desire to remember something acting as if we endeavoured to see it Abstraction Meditation When a person is lost in thought with his mind absent or as it is sometimes...
- Selected Sermons, Lesson: Interpretation builds institutions
  Interpretation builds institutions. The sermons show biblical reading shaping schools, discipline, poor relief, worship, and civic conduct. Interpretation is never merely private when it governs shared life.
Every gentleman should know the law
In his opening lecture Blackstone argues that knowledge of law belongs to liberal education, because jurors, magistrates, legislators and landowners all exercise legal power. A free people that does not understand its laws cannot keep them.
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- The Jungle Book, Lesson: Living under a Law
  Living under a Law. Baloo teaches Mowgli that the jungle is not lawless: hunters must give warning, must not kill man, and must keep faith in the Pack. The Bandar-log, who boast but have no law and forget everything, show what happens to a people without one. Kipling's jungle prizes obedience, training and duty as the ground of freedom.
- Freedom and the Law, Lesson: Law discovered, not made
  Law discovered, not made. Leoni draws on Roman private law and the English common law to argue that much law can be found in the settled expectations of a people and stated by judges and jurists, rather than invented by a legislature. The idea has deep roots in the medieval belief that the king must keep the law of the land, not create it.
- The Spirit of the Laws, Lesson: Laws must suit the nation that lives under them
  Laws must suit the nation that lives under them. Montesquieu does not write a single code for all mankind. He argues that a good law in one country may be a poor law in another, because laws are tied to a people's government, climate, religion, commerce and customs. Wise legislation begins with knowing the people well.
- Leviathan, Part I, Ch. VI, 'Of the Interiour Beginnings of Voluntary Motions'
  Definitions of the passions as forms of appetite and aversion, including fear, grief, anxiety and the 'Panique Terror' of crowds.
- Thoughts on Government and Selected Letters, No. Ix
  are not re- presented in our parliament so they are not bound by our statutes unless specially named Pemberton contra argued that by the conquest of a nation its liberties rights and properties are quite And JL48 NOVANGLUS lost that by consequence their laws are lost too for the law is but the rule and guard of the other those that conquer cannot by then victory lose their laws and become subject to others That error lies here upon a judgment in Jamaica which could not be if they were not under the same law Et p...
The law as guardian of those who cannot guard themselves
Chapter 8's account of idiots and lunatics shows the crown acting as trustee for people unable to manage their affairs, preserving their property for them and forbidding the next heir to be the keeper of a lunatic, since he would gain by the person's death. Blackstone presents this protective duty as part of the king's office as general conservator of his people.
Related across the library
- King Lear, Gloucester.
  this knave came something saucily to the world before he was sent for yet was his mother fair there was good sport at his making and the whoreson must be acknowledged Do you know this noble gentleman Edmund EDMUND No my lord GLOUCESTER My Lord of Kent remember him hereafter as my honourable friend EDMUND My services to your lordship KENT I must love you and sue to know you better EDMUND Sir I shall study deserving GLOUCESTER He hath been out nine years and away he shall again The King is coming Sennet within Ent...
- Beyond Good and Evil, Seven Apophthegms For Women
  which holds its own even in presence of the brown sunsets of the desert whose soul is akin to the palm-tree and can be at home and can roam with big beautiful lonely beasts of prey I could imagine a music of which the rarest charm would be that it knew nothing more of good and evil only that here and there perhaps some sailor's home-sickness some golden shadows and tender weaknesses might sweep lightly over it an art which from the far distance would see the colours of a sinking and almost incomprehensible MORAL...
- The Spirit of the Laws, Book XI. Of the Laws Which Establish Political Liberty, with Regard to
  men only of the republic had the whole legislative the whole executive and the whole judiciary power Rome saw herself enslaved by as cruel a tyranny as that of Tarquin When Tarquin trampled on the liberty of that city she was seized with indignation at the power he had usurped when the decemvirs exercised every act of oppression she was astonished at the extraordinary power she had granted What a strange system of tyranny a tyranny carried on by men who had obtained the political and military power merely from t...
- The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Full Text
  others who were seldom known to perform a kind or generous action but the most barbarous and tyrannical of all were those former serfs who arose from the dirt and became princes It was this latter class who made life literally a burden to those who were unfortunate enough to come under their rule Many of them had arisen from the ranks of the peasantry to become superintendents of noblemen s estates The peasants were obliged to work for their master a certain number of days each week There was plenty of land and...
- The Giver, Lesson: Wisdom needs memory
  Wisdom needs memory. The Elders consult the Giver because only he remembers what happened when people chose badly before. A people that forgets its past cannot judge well, and one person carrying all the memory for everyone is lonely and overburdened.

Verified Quotes

“law of nature, being co-eval with mankind and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other.”

— William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Introduction, §2 (Of the Nature of Laws in General) (First edition, Oxford 1765, Project Gutenberg #30802 text).Quote card