Description: Departing from traditional approaches to colonial legal history, Mary Sarah Bilder argues that American law and legal culture developed within the framework of an evolving, unwritten transatlantic constitution that lawyers, legislators, and litigants on both sides of the Atlantic understood.
Brief description: Mary Sarah Bilder is Founders Professor of Law and Michael and Helen Lee Distinguished Scholar, Boston College Law School.
Review Quotes: Mary Sarah Bilder has taken an old and long-unfashionable topic and successfully given it new interest, perspective, and importance. She is the first historian to explore the relationship between colonial legal culture and sources of constitutional authority within the British empire, and she does so with a fine appreciation for the negotiated, pragmatic, and changing nature of the relationship. This book is a major contribution to colonial American legal, constitutional, and imperial history and sets the standard for future study of the transatlantic constitution.--Bruce H. Mann, author of Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence