Review Article: Comments on William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England

AbstractWilfrid Prest has written the best biography of Sir William Blackstone, has edited his correspondence, and has produced an impressive range of essays and articles on Blackstone and his works. He has now persuaded a world‐renowned press to produce a new edition of Blackstone's most famous and most influential work, Commentaries on the Laws of England, that provides readers with the first edition of this four‐volume work (1765–9) and all the changes subsequently approved by Blackstone up to the ninth edition, published posthumously in 1783. He has recruited four major legal historians to provide scholarly introductions of great value. This review article seeks to appreciate why Blackstone's Commentaries had such an enormous impact when they first appeared and why they are still subject to serious study to this day. It first shows how Blackstone's academic, legal and political career influenced the structure and content of his Commentaries. It then examines the strengths and the weaknesses of the structure and contents of the Commentaries. Blackstone's four volumes sold well in the English‐speaking world and were generally well reviewed when they first appeared. In England, his discussion on religious toleration did arouse some criticism from radical Dissenters such as Joseph Priestley and his whole approach to the common law and the constitution was savaged by the young Jeremy Bentham. In Ireland and in the North American colonies his comments on the common law were well received, but his views on the sovereignty of parliament aroused the hostility of Irish and American Patriots. Despite this, Blackstone's Commentaries were very widely used by lawyers on the American frontier and they became for decades a major text in American university law schools. For much of the nineteenth century Blackstone's views were criticized in England by Bentham and his utilitarian disciples, who advocated legal reforms, but, from the 1930s onwards, leading lawyers and historians across the world have endeavoured to show that Blackstone was more critical of the legal system of his day and of the laws passed by parliament than Bentham had appreciated.