English jurist and the first Vinerian Professor of English Law at Oxford (1758), later a judge on the Court of Common Pleas. His four-volume Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765 to 1769) was the first attempt to present the whole of English common law as a coherent, teachable system rather than a mass of case reports, and was read closely by the American Founders, cited routinely by early United States courts as an authority on what the common law provided.
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Nationality / JurisdictionEngland; English common law 1 Place of Death Classification
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What is William Blackstone best known for writing, and how did it come about?
The Commentaries on the Laws of England, a four-volume overview of common law that grew out of his lectures as the first Vinerian Professor.
Blackstone is best known for the four-volume Commentaries on the Laws of England, the best-known description of the doctrines of English common law. It grew out of his career at Oxford: on 20 October 1758 he was confirmed as the first Vinerian Professor of English Law, and his lectures, beginning with A Discourse on the Study of the Law, were popular and printed. The first of the four volumes appeared in November 1765. The Commentaries were designed to give a complete overview of English law and were republished in 1770, 1773, 1774, 1775, 1778 and posthumously in 1783. Legal education in England had stalled, and his work gave the law at least a veneer of scholarly respectability.
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Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Blackstone
Sir William Blackstone, a famous English jurist, wrote Commentaries on the Laws of England between 1765 and 1769. Lawyers and laymen considered it an authoritative and intelligible explanation of English law because of its style.
- In Legal System: Common Law
- Works Attributed: Commentaries on the Laws of England
View the Source Wikidata: Sir William Blackstone
Wikidata Q332449, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)View the Source William Blackstone (Wikipedia)
Member Of: Court of King's Bench (England), Wikipedia category: cat:Justices of the King's BenchView the Source Reader Challenges (0)
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