As a law student and young lawyer in the 1760s, Thomas Jefferson began writing abstracts of English common law reports. Even after abandoning his law practice, he continued to rely on his legal commonplace book to document the legal, historical, and philosophical reading that helped shape his new role as a statesman. Indeed, he made entries in the notebook in preparation for his mission to France, as president of the United States, and near the end of his life. This authoritative volume is the first to contain the complete text of Jefferson’s notebook. With more than 900 entries on such thinkers as Beccaria, Montesquieu, and Lord Kames, Jefferson’s Legal Commonplace Book is a fascinating chronicle of the evolution of Jefferson’s searching mind. Jefferson’s abstracts of common law reports, most published here for the first time, indicate his deepening commitment to whig principles and his incisive understanding of the political underpinnings of the law. As his intellectual interests and political aspirations evolved, so too did the content and composition of his notetaking. Unlike the only previous edition of Jefferson’s notebook, published in 1926, this edition features a verified text of Jefferson’s entries and full annotation, including essential information on the authors and books he documents. In addition, the volume includes a substantial introduction that places Jefferson’s text in legal, historical, and biographical context.

At twenty-three, Thomas Jefferson became the youngest practitioner before Virginia's highest court. This is the first book to explore in depth the eight years that Jefferson spent as a trial lawyer. Frank L. Dewey considers how Jefferson prepared for his career, how he acquired a clientele, what kind of cases he handled, how he fared financially, and why he retired from the law. The principal sources for this account are found in unpublished notes of Jefferson. As Dewey pieces together these notes, a larger picture emerges. The appeal of Jefferson is universal, and Thomas Jefferson, Lawyer fills an important gap in our knowledge about him.

This work is a new edition of Thomas Jefferson's literary commonplace book, a notebook of his literary and philosophical reading. Unlike the only previous edition, published in 1928, it contains full annotation, pertinent information on the authors and works commonplaced, and a rationale for dating the entries. Thus it is now possible to show that most of the four hundred seven passages were entered when Jefferson was a young man, between the ages of fifteen and thirty. As such, they reflect the range of his literary interests from his school days to about the time of his marriage and involvement in politics. As one of the few surviving documents from Jefferson's early years, this notebook assumes special importance as a source of insight into the least known period of his life. In the introduction the editor presents reasons for thinking that the commonplace book was more to Jefferson than a literary sampler and was in some respects a deeply personal notebook with direct connections to the emotional events and preoccupations of his formative years. In addition to the text and annotation, the book contains a register of authors and an illustrated essay on Jefferson's handwriting that provides the rationale for assigning approximate dates to the entries of the commonplace book. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This book in memory of F. Donald Logan explores different aspects of Christian culture and society in England from the twelfth to the sixteenth century. Although this period has traditionally been interpreted in terms of decline and decay, this excessively gloomy picture has slowly given way over the last eighty years or so to a more positive view of Christian civilization during these centuries. The twenty-two studies brought together here seek to build on this ongoing reassessment of Later Catholic England, especially in those areas in which Professor Logan himself had done so much to deepen our understanding of Christian English society. Contributors are: Travis Baker, Caroline Barron, Nicholas Bennett, Barbara Bombi, Paul Brand, Janet Burton, James G. Clark, Karen Corsano, Virginia Davis, Charles Donahue Jr, Anne J. Duggan, Joan Greatrex, Diana Greenway, Michael Haren, R.H. Helmholz, Philippa Hoskin, Henry Ansgar Kelly, Frederik Pedersen, Seymour Phillips, Michael J.P. Robson, Jens Röhrkasten, Jane Sayers, R.N. Swanson, Daniel Williman, and Patrick Zutshi.

William Byrd II (1674-1744) was an important figure in the history of colonial Virginia: a founder of Richmond, an active participant in Virginia politics, and the proprietor of one of the colony's greatest plantations. But Byrd is best known today for his diaries. Considered essential documents of private life in colonial America, they offer readers an unparalleled glimpse into the world of a Virginia gentleman. This book joins Byrd's Diary, Secret Diary, and other writings in securing his reputation as one of the most interesting men in colonial America. Edited and presented here for the first time, Byrd's commonplace book is a collection of moral wit and wisdom gleaned from reading and conversation. The nearly six hundred entries range in tone from hope to despair, trust to dissimulation, and reflect on issues as varied as science, religion, women, Alexander the Great, and the perils of love. A ten-part introduction presents an overview of Byrd's life and addresses such topics as his education and habits of reading and his endeavors to understand himself sexually, temperamentally, and religiously, as well as the history and cultural function of commonplacing. Extensive annotations discuss the sources, background, and significance of the entries.

This collection of seventeen original essays reshapes the field of early American legal history not by focusing simply on law, or even on the relationship between law and society, but by using the concept of "legality" to explore the myriad ways in which the people of early America ordered their relationships with one another, whether as individuals, groups, classes, communities, or states. Addressing issues of gender, ethnicity, family, patriarchy, culture, and dependence, contributors explore the transatlantic context of early American law, the negotiation between European and indigenous legal cultures, the multiple social contexts of the rule of law, and the transformation of many legalities into an increasingly uniform legal culture. Taken together, these essays reveal the extraordinary diversity and complexity of the roots of early America's legal culture. Contributors are Mary Sarah Bilder, Holly Brewer, James F. Brooks, Richard Lyman Bushman, Christine Daniels, Cornelia Hughes Dayton, David Barry Gaspar, Katherine Hermes, John G. Kolp, David Thomas Konig, James Muldoon, William M. Offutt Jr., Ann Marie Plane, A. G. Roeber, Terri L. Snyder, and Linda L. Sturtz.

This first book of the sixth volume centers on the Revolutionary and Constitutional eras in early American history, while also carrying the story ahead into the early 19th century. How did the American founders adapt and utilize European thought in their political and legal ideas on sovereignty, state, and legislation? Because of the seismic impact of European thought (and classical traditions) on America's foremost founders, it should come as no surprise that some of the most basic documents in the emergent new Republic were significantly influenced by European writings. Subsequent studies will take up the same basic themes in American thought and events from the mid-19th century to the present period. The common denominator of legislation is seen to underlie their concepts of sovereignty and the state across a diverse range of isms such as utilitarianism, positivism, idealism, socialism, and nationalism, in the 19th century and in related neo and anti-neo forms in the 20th century. The organization and classification of these and other issues is on the whole novel and comprehensive. As various reviewers have indicated, nothing of this magnitude on the subjects at hand has ever before been attempted.

Allen Jayne analyzes the ideology of the Declaration of Independence—and its implications—by going back to the sources of Jefferson's ideas: Bolingbroke, Kames, Reid, and Locke. He concludes that the Declaration must be read as an attack on two claims of absolute authority: that of government over its subjects and of religion over the minds of men. Today's world is more secular than Jefferson's, and the importance of philosophical theology in eighteenth-century critical thought must be recognized in order to understand fully and completely the Declaration's implications. Jayne addresses this need by putting religion back into the discussion.

This extensive study suggests that, despite being one of the largest slaveholders in Virginia, Jefferson was consistent in his advocacy of human rights.

This introductory text explores the historical origins of the main legal institutions that came to characterize the Anglo-American legal tradition, and to distinguish it from European legal systems. The book contains both text and extracts from historical sources and literature. The book is published in color, and contains over 250 illustrations, many in color, including medieval illuminated manuscripts, paintings, books and manuscripts, caricatures, and photographs.