The Ancient Constitution And The Origins Of Anglo-American Liberty

"In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, English and American lawyers appealed to "the ancient constitution" as the cornerstone of liberty. According to this idea, constitutional law was not dictated by a monarch but based on the authority of custom, passed down unaltered from time immemorial. Legal historian John Phillip Reid demonstrates that this concept of an unchanging, ancient constitution furnished English common lawyers and parliamentarians an argument with which to combat royal prerogative power. At the same time, it provided American revolutionaries with legal arguments for rejecting the British parliament's effort to impose arbitrary rule upon the colonies."--BOOK JACKET.

Year

2005

Language

English

Publisher

Northern Illinois University Press

Editions

1

Pages

188

ISBN

9780875803425

Data source: Wikidata