Blackstone and His Critics

Anthony Page is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Tasmania.Wilfrid Prest is Emeritus Professor of History and of Law at the University of Adelaide.

• 1. Rationalising the Common Law: Blackstone and His PredecessorsMichael Lobban2. The ‘Least Repulsive’ Work on a ‘Repulsive Subject’: Jeremy Bentham on William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England Philip Schofield3. Blackstone, Expositor and Censor of Law Both Made and Found Jessie Allen4. William Blackstone, Edward Gibbon and Thomas Winchester: The Case for an Oxford Enlightenment Ian Doolittle5. Rational Dissent and Blackstone’s Commentaries Anthony Page6. Blackstone, Parliamentary Sovereignty and his Irish Critics Ultán Gillen7. Blackstone, Family Law and the Exclusion of the Half Blood in Inheritance Tim Stretton8. Blackstone and Women Carolyn Steedman9. Professing Law in the Shadow of the Commentaries David Lieberman10. Hammond’s Blackstone and the Historical School of American Jurisprudence David M Rabban11. ‘A Very Narrowing Effect Upon Our Profession’: A Progressive Jurist Confronts Blackstone John V Orth12. Blackstone’s Posthumous Reputation Wilfrid Prest

The gap in existing scholarship that is handsomely addressed in this volume is a critical analysis of Blackstone’s Commentaries and the uses to which they have been put ... In promoting a critical and informed view of the Commentaries, Blackstone and His Critics provides important intellectual stimulus to modern readers.