The Ancient Constitution And The Origins Of Anglo-American Liberty
Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
Published: August 27, 2005
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 188
ISBN-13: 9780875803425
Subjects: American history: c 1500 to c 1800; Jurisprudence & General Issues; c 1600 to c 1700; c 1700 to c 1800; United States; English influences; Law; Legal Reference / Law Profession; USA; Constitutional; England; Constitutional history
Description: "In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, English and American lawyers appealed to "the ancient constitution" as the cornerstone of liberty. According to this idea, constitutional law was not dictated by a monarch but based on the authority of custom, passed down unaltered from time immemorial. Legal historian John Phillip Reid demonstrates that this concept of an unchanging, ancient constitution furnished English common lawyers and parliamentarians an argument with which to combat royal prerogative power. At the same time, it provided American revolutionaries with legal arguments for rejecting the British parliament's effort to impose arbitrary rule upon the colonies."--BOOK JACKET.