| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Transatlantic Constitution: Colonial Legal Culture and the Empire. By Mary Sarah Bilder. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004. xvi, 291 pp. $49.95, ISBN 0-674-01512-6.)

Although the mainstream of early American history has deserted the fields of political and legal history, there is a healthy resurgence of interest in this time period among legal and constitutional historians. This study of the British imperial constitution, based upon extensive research in English and American archives, is one of the more significant recent pieces of scholarship in this area. In part retracing topics covered exhaustively by Joseph H. Smith (Appeals to the Privy Council from the American Plantations, 1950), law professor Mary Sarah Bilder has come to some new conclusions that make this short volume essential reading for all students of early America. Two things add to the distinctive nature of her monograph: (1) she focuses upon the interplay of Rhode Island's legal system with the governmental priorities of the English/British Privy Council, and (2) her broader time frame permits her to draw some preliminary conclusions about the impact of colonial constitutionalism upon United States federal and state constitutional thought and practice.

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