Blackstone

Blackstone in the Dictionary of Law consisting of Judicial Definitions and Explanations of Words, Phrases and Maxims

Sir William. Born July 10, 1723. In 1765 appeared the first volume of his commentaries. The other three volumes were published during the next four years. He died February 14, 1780. American lawyers, with few exceptions, since the Revolution, have drawn their first lessons in jurisprudence from Blackstone”s Commentaries (Bl. Com.).

Note: This legal definition of Blackstone in the Dictionary of Law (English and American Jurisprudence) is from 1893.

What does Blackstone mean in American Law?

The definition of Blackstone in the law of the United States, as defined by the lexicographer Arthur Leff in his legal dictionary is:

The author, and hence the short title, of Commentaries on the Laws of England, the last great attempt to restate and rationalize all of English law. Written by Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780), and first published between 1765 and 1769, it went through an enormous number of editions and was immensely influential, in England and perhaps even more in its colonies, especially American: There eighteenth and nineteenth century legal apprenticeship often consisted of little more than committing much of Blackstone (usually in versions modified for the American market- see, e.g., Kent and Tucker) to memory. A massive attempt to show that “the common law” was basically rational and, in a sense, inevitable, the Commentaries have been criticized as “vicious rationalism,” apologetics for the political and social status quo. But the success of the work was not solely a result of its political conservatism; it was and is quite a scholarly performance, full of old learning and almost forgivable ingenuity.

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