Oxford's variorum edition of William Blackstone's seminal treatise on the common law of England and Wales offers the definitive account of the Commentaries' development in a modern format. For the first time it is possible to trace the evolution of English law and Blackstone's thought through the eight editions of Blackstone's lifetime, and the authorial corrections of the posthumous ninth edition. Introductions by the general editor and the volume editors set the Commentaries in their historical context, examining Blackstone's distinctive view of the common law, and editorial notes throughout the four volumes assist the modern reader in understanding this key text in the Anglo-American common law tradition. Entitled Of Private Wrongs, Book III can be divided into three principal parts. The first describes the multiple courts in England and their jurisdictions, including the wrongs cognizable in each of them. The second describes some aspects of the substantive common law: wrongs to persons and to personal and real property. The third describes the processes of litigation in the courts of common law and equity.

On dust cover of Book I: "with a general editor's introduction by Wilfrid Priest."

A history of legal emotions in William Blackstone’s England and their relationship to justice William Blackstone’s masterpiece, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769), famously took the “ungodly jumble” of English law and transformed it into an elegant and easily transportable four-volume summary. Soon after publication, the work became an international monument not only to English law, but to universal English concepts of justice and what Blackstone called “the immutable laws of good and evil.” Most legal historians regard the Commentaries as a brilliant application of Enlightenment reasoning to English legal history. Loving Justice contends that Blackstone’s work extends beyond making sense of English law to invoke emotions such as desire, disgust, sadness, embarrassment, terror, tenderness, and happiness. By enlisting an affective aesthetics to represent English law as just, Blackstone created an evocative poetics of justice whose influence persists across the Western world. In doing so, he encouraged readers to feel as much as reason their way to justice. Ultimately, Temple argues that the Commentaries offers a complex map of our affective relationship to juridical culture, one that illuminates both individual and communal understandings of our search for justice, and is crucial for understanding both justice and injustice today.

This collection explores the remarkable impact and continuing influence of William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, from the work's original publication in the 1760s down to the present. Contributions by cultural and literary scholars, and intellectual and legal historians trace the manner in which this truly seminal text has established its authority well beyond the author's native shores or his own limited lifespan. In the first section, 'Words and Visions', Kathryn Temple, Simon Stern, Cristina S Martinez and Michael Meehan discuss the Commentaries' aesthetic and literary qualities as factors contributing to the work's unique status in Anglo-American legal culture. The second group of essays traces the nature and dimensions of Blackstone's impact in various jurisdictions outside England, namely Quebec (Michel Morin), Louisiana and the United States more generally (John W Cairns and Stephen M Sheppard), North Carolina (John V Orth) and Australasia (Wilfrid Prest). Finally Horst Dippel, Paul Halliday and Ruth Paley examine aspects of Blackstone's influential constitutional and political ideas, while Jessie Allen concludes the volume with a personal account of 'Reading Blackstone in the Twenty-First Century and the Twenty-First Century through Blackstone'. This volume is a sequel to the well-received collection Blackstone and his Commentaries: Biography, Law, History (Hart Publishing, 2009).

One of the most celebrated works in the Anglo-American legal tradition, William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-9) has recently begun to attract renewed interest from legal and other scholars. The Commentaries no longer dominate legal education as they once did, especially in North America during the century after their first publication. But they continue to be regularly cited in the judgments of superior courts of review on both sides of the Atlantic, and elsewhere throughout the common-law world. They also provide constitutional, cultural, intellectual and legal historians with a remarkably comprehensive account of the role of law, lawyers and the courts in the imperial superpower that was England on the cusp of the industrial revolution. The life and character of Blackstone himself, the nature and sources of his jurisprudence as expounded in the Commentaries, and the impact of his great book, both within and beyond his native shores, are the main themes of this collection. Individual essays treat Blackstone's early architectural treatises and their relationship to the Commentaries; his idiosyncratic book collecting; his views of the role of judges, interpretation of statutes, the law of marriage, the status of wives, natural law, property law and the legalities of colonisation, and the varied reception of the Commentaries in America and continental Europe. Blackstone's bibliography and iconography also receive attention. Combining the work of both eminent and emerging scholars, this interdisciplinary venture sheds welcome new light on a legal classic and its continued influence. I Life 1 Blackstone and Biography - Wilfrid Prest 2 A 'Model of the Old House': Architecture in Blackstone's Life and Commentaries - Carol Matthews 3 'A Mighty Consumption of Ale': Blackstone, Buckler, and All Souls College, Oxford - Norma Aubertin-Potter 4 William Blackstone and William Prynne: an Unlikely Association? - Ian Doolittle II Thought 5 Blackstone on Judging - John H Langbein 6 Blackstone's Rules for the Construction of Statutes - John V Orth 7 Blackstone and Bentham on the Law of Marriage - Mary Sokol 8 Coverture and Unity of Person in Blackstone's Commentaries -Tim Stretton 9 Blackstone's Commentaries on Colonialism: Australian Judicial Interpretations - Thalia Anthony 10 Restoring the 'Real' to Real Property Law: A Return to Blackstone? - Nicole Graham III Influence 11 American Blackstones - Michael Hoeflich 12 Did Blackstone get the Gallic Shrug? - John Emerson 13 Blackstone in Germany - Horst Dippel IV Sources 14 Bibliography - Morris Cohen 15 Iconography - J H Baker and Wilfrid Prest Contributors -Thalia Anthony lectures in law at the University of Sydney. -Norma Aubertin-Potter is Librarian-in-Charge of the Codrington Library, All Souls College, Oxford. -J H Baker, Downing Professor of the Laws of England at the University of Cambridge, is Literary Director of the Selden Society. -Morris Cohen, Professor Emeritus and Professorial Lecturer in Law, is the former Librarian of Yale Law School. -Horst Dippel is Professor of British and American Studies at the University of Kassel. -Ian Doolittle, formerly a Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford, is a partner in the law firm Trowers and Hamlins LLP in London. -John Emerson holds a Visiting Research Fellowship in the Law School, University of Adelaide. -Nicole Graham is Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law, University of Technology, Sydney. -Michael Hoeflich is John H and John M Kane Distinguished Professor in the Law School, University of Kansas. -John Langbein is Sterling Professor of Law and Legal History at Yale Law School. -Carol Matthews teaches in the School of History and Politics at the University of Adelaide. -John V Orth holds the William Rand Kenan Jr Chair of Law at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. -Wilfrid Prest is Professor Emeritus and Visiting Research Fellow in the Law School and School of History and Politics, University of Adelaide. -Mary Sokol holds an Honorary Research Fellowship in the Bentham Project at University College London. -Tim Stretton teaches history at St Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia.