Excerpt from Legal Development in Colonial Massachusetts, 1630-1686 According to the accepted legal theory, the American colonists claimed the English common law as their birth. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Explores a fascinating aspect of the early colony's legal system: its denial of the binding force of English law in favor of an original legal system. Although the common law played a role, the colonists used it selectively and combined it with the provisions of the colony's charter, local statutes and scripture. One of the earliest books on the history of American law, this pioneering work was originally published in the series Studies in History, Economics and Public Law edited by the Political Science Faculty of Columbia University.

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Excerpt from A Bibliographical Sketch of the Laws of the Massachusetts Colony, From 1630 to 1686: In Which Are Included the Body of Liberties of 1641, and the Records of the Court of Assistants, 1641-1644 In other words, the committee of 1812 did not reprint either the edition Of Laws of 1660 or of 1672 complete, but they made a new compilation with a new arrangement of chapters, and inserted such general laws, evidently, as they considered to have remained a material part of the colonial system. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.