The Ancient Constitution and the Origins of Anglo-American Liberty

John Phillip Reid is an eminent academic lawyer and legal historian who has written many impressively researched and subtly argued studies of the constitutional arguments advanced during the crisis of the American Revolution. His knowledge of the pamphlet literature produced by American protagonists during these crucial debates is probably unrivalled and he is almost as well versed in the political literature produced by British controversialists in the eighteenth century. All historians interested in the ideological debate waged on both sides of the Atlantic during the American Revolution need to consult his prolific output, but they will find in them a legal approach that is not the same as that adopted by most historians, as well as a very strong preference for the principles that eventually came to underlie the American constitution rather than those in support of the sovereignty of king-in-parliament. Both characteristics are apparent in this latest work. Reid

Constitution · Ideology · Parliament · Political science · Politics · Sovereignty · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Classics · Historical Economic and Legal Thought · History · Law · Political Theory and Influence