The Tree of Legal Knowledge Imagining Blackstones Commentaries John V Orth Full Chapter PDF Scribd

The Tree of Legal Knowledge:
Imagining Blackstone's Commentaries

John V. Orth
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-tree-of-legal-knowledge-imagining-blackstones-co
mmentaries-john-v-orth/
John V. Orth
The Tree of Legal

Knowledge
Imagining Blackstone’s Commentaries
The Tree of Legal Knowledge
Title page of The Tree of Legal Knowledge, by An Attorney at Law, published by Turner & Hughes,
Raleigh 1838. (Credit Boston Athenæum)
John V. Orth
The Tree of Legal Knowledge

Imagining Blackstone’s Commentaries
John V. Orth
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC, USA
ISBN 978-981-19-8695-6 ISBN 978-981-19-8696-3 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8696-3
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse
of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar
or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721,
Singapore
Foreword by Michael Widener
The Tree of Legal Knowledge unearthed (or transplanted?) by John Orth has ancient
roots. Tree diagrams are the earliest illustrations of the law to appear in legal literature.
Trees of consanguinity, depicting degrees of blood relationships in canon law, first
appeared in ninth-century canon law manuscripts. In the fourteenth century, the
famous canon law professor Giovanni d’Andrea wrote a brief essay, Super arboribus
consanguinitatis et affinitatis, that survives in dozens of medieval manuscripts and
early printed books, often adorned with a tree of consanguinity and its sibling, the
tree of affinity depicting relationships by marriage.
Trees of consanguinity and affinity were the very first law-related illustrations to
appear in a printed law book, the 1473 Nuremberg edition of Giovanni d’Andrea’s
essay. They went on to become the most common illustrations in books written for
legal practitioners and students, adorning the basic texts of canon law and Roman
law, treatises on domestic relations and inheritance, and compilations of customary
laws across western Europe. In an era when canon law governed so many aspects of
human activity, trees of consanguinity and affinity were useful tools for lawyers and
even parish priests. They provided clear definitions of incest and were also useful in
inheritance cases and other legal issues involving family relationships. Many of them
are quite beautiful. Even when the artists jettisoned the tree motif for architectural
or strictly schematic renditions, they continued to be referred to as trees.
Trees of consanguinity are distinct from other types of law-related illustrations.
Unlike allegorical images that symbolize the law or representational images that
depict concrete facts, trees of consanguinity are analytical images, translating abstract
legal concepts into graphic form. In the sixteenth century, authors adapted the tree
metaphor to illustrate a number of other legal concepts, such as jurisdiction, feudal
obligations, and servitudes.
Tree diagrams were not only the earliest form of legal illustration. They also
endured the longest, outliving the allegorical images that fell out of fashion with
the dawn of the Industrial Age. I attribute their longevity to their usefulness. At one
glance, a tree diagram communicates both the unity and complexity of a branch of
the law, while enabling the viewer to bore down to the specific issue that interests
v
vi Foreword by Michael Widener
him, and its relationship to the field as a whole. In short, the tree diagram encourages
the student or practitioner to think like a lawyer.
In the fifteen years I spent growing a collection of illustrated law books at the
Yale Law Library, I found law-related illustrations in hundreds of European law
books but in only a handful of English law books. (To be clear, I am counting
illustrations that speak about the law, and not portraits or decorations.) Illustrations
in American law books are even more scarce. By the nineteenth century, illustrations
disappeared almost completely from law books, Anglo-American and European, as
the publishers of law books abandoned the aesthetic aspirations of their predecessors
and the authors’ abandoned imagery as a tool for scholarship, practice, and teaching.
My brief synopsis of legal illustration serves to highlight the value of John Orth’s
contribution. The Tree of Legal Knowledge is one of the last appearances of a tree
diagram in Western legal literature. Indeed, at the moment it appeared illustrations
(even author portraits and decorations) had, for all intents and purposes, disappeared
from the professional literature of Anglo-American law. It is the first tree diagram to
encompass an entire legal system. By comparing The Tree of Legal Knowledge to the
dauntingly complex “Law Tree” of 1926, Orth highlights its clarity and elegance. It
is the only illustration I know of that encompasses an entire treatise, and not just any
treatise but rather the four volumes of William Blackstone’s classic Commentaries
on the Laws of England, the single most influential treatise in the history of Anglo-
American law. It is rendered in glorious color, another rarity in legal literature.
But Orth has done much more than rescue this treasure from undeserved obscurity.
He describes the North Carolina soil from which The Tree of Legal Knowledge
sprouted. In a brilliant piece of detective work, he has discovered the identity of the
author and brought him to life. He documents the publishers and printers who brought
The Tree of Legal Knowledge to market. He locates the tree within the broader context
of Blackstone’s Commentaries and American legal education. His footnotes explain
the author’s accompanying text to today’s readers. On behalf of those readers, our
profound thanks to Springer Publishing, the Boston Athenaeum, and most of all John
Orth.
During my tenure as the Yale Law Library’s rare book librarian, I was in charge
of the library’s William Blackstone Collection, the world’s largest and most compre-
hensive collection of Blackstone’s works. When John Orth contacted me several
years ago about his discovery, The Tree of Legal Knowledge became my Holy Grail.
I never found a copy for Yale, but I can’t shake the suspicion that there must be
copies lurking somewhere, in a second-hand bookshop, an antique shop, an attic, a
law firm, or a library. My hope is that the book in hand will smoke them out.
Fort Washington, MA, USA Michael Widener

June 2022 Rare Book Librarian (emeritus)
Yale Law School
Foreword by Wilfrid Prest
Notwithstanding large-scale deforestation for agriculture and human habitation,

much of the landscape of North Carolina is still characterised by impressive stands
of tall timber. So even without the deep-rooted arboreal law-book tradition Michael
Widener has drawn to our attention, it seems most appropriate that this distinctly
North Carolinian pictorial summation of Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of
England, re-discovered and meticulously contextualised by John Orth, should take
the form of a tree.
Long before he became the first-ever professor of English law, then successively
MP, judge, and knight of the realm, the young William Blackstone had developed a
keen interest in architecture and the art of drawing.1 His earliest published attempt
at representing “the History and Antiquities of the principal Branches [my italics] of
Law” in An Analysis of the Laws of England (1756 and 5 later editions) includes two
elaborate diagrams, a “Table of Consanguinity” and a “Table of Descents,” the former
presented as the “Arbor Consanguinitatis [Tree of Consanguinity] usually printed
with the Bodies of civil and canon Law” (p. 134). Three years earlier his printed “syl-
labus” or outline of the topics to be covered in his pioneering law lectures to Oxford
undergraduates, the eventual source of the Commentaries, had consisted of broad-
sheet tables arranged in a fashion reminiscent of the branching dichotomous figures
summarising complex bodies of knowledge, associated with the influential sixteenth-
century French pedaogogue-philosopher Pierre de la Ramée or Petrus Ramus (1515–
1572) and his many followers.2 English Ramists included the Gray’s Inn lawyer
Henry Finch, whose posthumously-published Law, or a Discourse thereof (1627),
1 See C. S. Martinez, ‘Blackstone as Draughtsman: Picturing the Law’, in W. Prest (ed.) Re-
Interpreting Blackstone’s Commentaries: A Seminal Text in National and International Contexts
(Oxford, 2014), 31–58.
2 Ramus himself employed the allegory of a tree of knowledge ‘with golden apples on its branches’
(Latin rami): cf. W. J. Ong, Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue (Cambridge MA, 1958),
174, 208.
vii
viii Foreword by Wilfrid Prest
reckoned by Blackstone “greatly superior” in method to all previous attempts, very

likely influenced the latter’s own approach to “reducing our Laws to a System.”3
For his part, Blackstone would surely have welcomed The Tree of Legal Knowl-
edge: in principle as a visual aid to facilitate absorbing and retaining the extensive
contents of his own magnum opus, in practice as a significant bibliographical object
realised by the combined talents of its anonymous—but now identified—creator, the
lithographer responsible for creating the printed images, and the printer-booksellers
who published this “North Carolina notion” in the late 1830s. Yet despite intensive
and wide-ranging searches, only one example of The Tree is currently known to have
survived from that time to this.
How are we to explain this mysterious apparent dearth of existing copies? Did a
comparatively high purchase price deter potential buyers? Was there only ever a very
small print run? Did those copies which were produced suffer severe ill-treatment
and neglect at the hands of their owners and users? Not the least service John Orth
has rendered to legal-historical scholarship and the history of the book by recovering
and editing this remarkable publication is to raise such questions in his readers’
minds. The process of attempting to answer them will surely help cast further light
on the state of legal education and intellectual life more generally, both in antebellum
North Carolina and America at large. That may be for the future; for the present, it
is quite enough to applaud and welcome this happy restoration of The Tree of Legal
Knowledge, nearly two centuries after its first appearance.
Adelaide, SA, Australia Wilfrid Prest

June 2022 Professor Emeritus of History and of Law
Adelaide Law School
Author of William Blackstone: Law and Letters in
the Eighteenth Century
3 Blackstone, Analysis of the Laws of England, v, vi.

Editor’s Preface
Over ten years ago, while preparing for a conference on the international influence
of Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, I came across a
reference to The Tree of Legal Knowledge, an illustrated guide to the Commentaries
that had been published in North Carolina in 1838. Intrigued, I looked for it in
my school’s law library. Astonished that it was not in the collection, I broadened my
search. It was not to be found in any library in North Carolina. Broadening my search
again, I discovered that it was not in any library—not in the Library of Congress,
not even in Yale’s Blackstone Collection, the largest in the world. Nor was it listed
in the comprehensive Bibliographical Catalog of William Blackstone, published for
the Yale Law Library in 2015. Dealers in rare law books did not have it. It seemed
to have vanished from the face of the earth!
At last, a single copy was located at the Boston Athenaeum, where it had
languished unexamined since it was first acquired in 1847. On inspection, it turned
out to be an elaborate visualization of the law on lithographed colored plates that,
placed side by side, measured about six feet across. But the mystery only deepened.
Not only had it almost completely disappeared, but its creator was identified only as
“an attorney at law.” Over the years, as time allowed from other projects, I collected
information on the publisher, the lithographer, the dedicatee, and at last—with the
assistance of a particularly talented research assistant—the author.
With this publication I hope to restore this lost legal masterpiece to its proper
place. It is a beautiful—and accurate—depiction of English law as expounded in
Blackstone’s Commentaries, the single most important book in the history of the
common law.
Chapel Hill, NC, USA John V. Orth
ix
Acknowledgements
Numerous librarians and archivists assisted with this project over the years, to whom I
express my sincere gratitude. Particular thanks go to Melissa Hyland of the University
of North Carolina Law Library for help ferreting out arcane materials. And special
mention must be made of the extraordinary help provided by my research assistant,
now practicing attorney, Jason R. Jones, who worked tirelessly to help discover the
identity of the mystery author of The Tree of Legal Knowledge.
The Rare Book Collection, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School,
graciously allowed the reproduction of four illustrations to accompany my intro-
duction to The Tree of Legal Knowledge. And the David M. Rubenstein Rare
Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University, generously allowed reproduction
of the pamphlet which originally accompanied the plates that made Blackstone’s
Commentaries come to life.
Above all, thanks go to the Boston Athenaeum, which carefully preserved the
beautiful plates for more than a century and a half and graciously gave me permission
to reproduce them. Over the last decade, the Athenaeum staff patiently responded
to my numerous requests for assistance. Particular thanks go to John Buchtel, who
cleared up some final details. But most of all, I am indebted to Will Evans, who
arranged—under trying circumstances—the necessary photographs. Many, many
thanks.
Without the expert assistance of Nigel Williams of Paperscape, Adelaide, South
Australia, I would never have been able to manage the task of preparing the figures
and plates for printing. He joins the ranks of those whose invaluable assistance over
the years allowed me to bring this project to completion.
xi
Contents
1 Editor’s Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Imagining Blackstone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 Imagining Blackstone’s Commentaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3 “Published by Turner and Hughes” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.4 Dedicated to William Gaston . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.5 Lithographed by J. H. Bufford . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.6 Imagining the Anonymous Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.7 Ben Lavender . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.8 Blackstone’s Ghost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2 Author’s Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3 Author’s Explanation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
4 The Tree of Legal Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
5 Author’s Explanation of the Branches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Appendix A: Blackstone’s Ghost: Law and Legal Education in North

Carolina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Appendix B: ‘A Very Narrowing Effect Upon Our Profession’:
North Carolina Chief Justice Walter Clark Confronts
Blackstone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Image Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
xiii
List of Figures
Fig. 1.1 “Sir William Blackstone” by an unknown artist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Fig. 1.2 “Christ Rejected” by Benjamin West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Fig. 1.3 Blackstone’s Table of Consanguinity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Fig. 1.4 Charts to accompany Blackstone’s Commentaries: Rights . . . . . . . 9
Fig. 1.5 Charts to Accompany Blackstone’s Commentaries: Wrongs . . . . . . 9
Fig. 1.6 The Law Tree. Top is the unfolded plate. Below are detail
views of the same . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
xv
List of Plates
Plate 4.1 Title Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Plate 4.2 Dedication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Plate 4.3 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Plate 4.4 The Municipal Law of England . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Plate 4.5 Public Wrongs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Additional Detail of Plate 4.5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Plate 4.6 Private Wrongs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Plate 4.7 Rights of Things . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Additional Detail of Plates 4.6 and 4.7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Plate 4.8 Rights of Persons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Plate 4.9 Mixed Government of Great Britain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Plates 4.4–4.8 The Tree of Legal Knowledge, pictorially assembled . . . . . . . 49
xvii
Chapter 1
Editor’s Introduction
In 1838 Turner & Hughes, booksellers in Raleigh, North Carolina, offered for sale
“an assistant for students in the study of law” called The Tree of Legal Knowledge.
Presented “in the form of a large map,” the study aid was designed “to impress upon
the mind the methodical divisions and subdivisions of Blackstone’s Commentaries,
and thus enable the student effectually to master the work and preserve the arrange-
ment as the general guide of his future studies.” Not for law students only, The Tree of
Legal Knowledge would also be of use to the practicing attorney “in consolidating his
learning and forming an instructive and ornamental appendage to an Office.” And the
gentleman, too, “desirous of becoming acquainted with that system of laws, of which
ours is principally composed, and which is highly necessary to every Legislator and
scholar,” would be “materially benefitted by its use.”1
The prosaic description of the study aid as a “map” hardly does it justice. It
is, in fact, a work of art in which the law presented in Sir William Blackstone’s
Commentaries on the Laws of England is depicted as a giant tree with the various
legal topics arranged along its branches. The illustrations were accompanied by
a text, consisting of the author’s Introduction, general Explanation, and detailed
Explanation of the Branches.
The Tree of Legal Knowledge bore a dedication to William Gaston, a prominent
lawyer appointed to the North Carolina Supreme Court in 1833, and the imprint
of the well-known New York lithographer John Henry Bufford, but its author was
identified only as “an attorney at law.” An earlier news story (probably a disguised
advertisement) had appealed to state patriotism, emphasizing that “the whole affair is
a North-Carolina ‘notion’—being in its inception, design and finish, the production
of North-Carolina heads.”2 Explaining that great expense had been incurred in “the
procurement of the Engraving” and that “the size of the edition will be regulated
entirely by the number of Subscribers,” Turner & Hughes called on “citizens of
1 Raleigh Register, 21 May 1838. Newspapers throughout the state were requested to reprint the
advertisement two times “and forward their accounts”.
2 Raleigh Register, 14 May 1838.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 1
J. V. Orth, The Tree of Legal Knowledge,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8696-3_1
2 1 Editor’s Introduction
the ‘Old North State’” to support “this ingenious production of one of her sons, a
gentleman of the bar.”
For a copy mounted on rollers, the price was eight dollars; bound as an atlas, it went
for six dollars; in separate sheets, it cost five dollars—all considerable sums in 1838.
To those who could afford it, anything that made Blackstone easier to understand
and remember was worth paying for. From the eighteenth to the twentieth century,
aspiring lawyers learned their law from Blackstone. In some states, as in North
Carolina, Blackstone was required reading for admission to the bar.3
Although The Tree of Legal Knowledge was entirely “a North-Carolina ‘notion,’”
it was proudly declared to have been “highly spoken of in New York, where it first
appeared.”4 A later advertisement carried impressive endorsements.5 U.S. Attorney
General B.F. Butler, who also served as a law professor at New York University,
reported that he had examined The Tree “with some care” and found that it “exhibits
with great ingenuity and accuracy the methods, divisions, and leading principles
of the English Law.” Two members of the Yale law faculty, Professors Samuel J.
Hitchcock and David Daggett, who also examined the work, concurred. And U.S.
Senator Robert Strange of North Carolina commented that “the ingenuity of the
design is not surpassed by its happy execution,” adding that “as a North Carolinian,
I am proud of this beautiful effort of genius.” Even Senators Henry Clay and Daniel
Webster lent their names, although both candidly admitted to giving The Tree only a
cursory examination, Webster modestly adding that “more weight… than is due to
my opinion is to be attached to those of Mr. Hitchcock and Chief Justice Daggett,
as they are regular and distinguished teachers of the law.”6 Notices appeared in both
The New Yorker and The Knickerbocker.7 Later, the Tree was listed among new
publications in The North American Review, published in Boston.8
3 See Appendix A, “Blackstone’s Ghost: Law and Legal Education in North Carolina,” for details
of the North Carolina requirements.
4 Raleigh Register, 14 May 1838. The Tree of Legal Knowledge was copyrighted in New York
under the Copyright Act of 1831, which conferred exclusive rights for twenty-eight years. The Act
required that a copy of the work be deposited in a federal district court. Beginning in 1870, copyright
registrations and deposits were transferred to the Library of Congress. Neither the District Court
for the Southern District of New York nor the Library of Congress presently possesses a copy of
The Tree of Legal Knowledge.
5 Raleigh Register, 25 June 1838.
6 Samuel J. Hitchcock, a founder of the Yale Law School, taught from 1824 until his death in
1845. David Daggett, formerly Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors (1832–
34), another founder of the Yale Law School, also began teaching in 1824 and was named Kent
Professor of Law in 1826, a post he held until his health forced him to resign in 1848.
7 The New Yorker, vol. V, no. 1 at p. 109 (24 March 1838); The Knickerbocker, vol. XI at p. 473
(May 1838).
8 North American Review, vol. XLVII, no. l00 at p. 266 (July 1838).
1.1 Imagining Blackstone 3
Today, the only known copy of The Tree of Legal Knowledge is in the collection of
the Boston Athenaeum, which has a set of nine large sheets—a title page, a dedica-
tion page, accompanying text,9 and six illustrated plates.10 Five plates, lithographed
and hand-colored, illustrate the substance of Blackstone’s Commentaries. The sixth
illustrated plate, not colored, depicts “the mixed government of Great Britain” and
serves as an “index,” explaining the symbols used to illustrate Blackstone’s treat-
ment of criminal law. The sheets, acquired by the Athenaeum on 11 October 1847,
remained unexamined in its collection for over a century and a half.11
1.1 Imagining Blackstone
Sir William Blackstone, who lived from 1723 to 1780, is not particularly hard to
imagine. We have several reliable portraits of him—reliable to the extent that society
portraitists could provide recognizable images but show at the same time an idealized
high court judge12 (see Fig. 1.1). We know him from the records as a punctilious
university lecturer, a middling lawyer, an undistinguished Member of Parliament, and
an almost equally undistinguished judge.13 Unlike Lord Mansfield, his great contem-
porary lawyer and judge, Blackstone was never known to “drink champagne with the
wits.”14 Dr. Samuel Johnson, also Blackstone’s contemporary, would have described
him as distinctly “unclubbable.”15 And Blackstone’s latest biographer admits that he
was not always an easy man to get along with.16
Mutatis mutandis, Blackstone was like a great many other eighteenth-century
professional gentlemen who aspired to join the country gentry. But to generations of
lawyers and judges throughout the common law world Blackstone was not a man,
but a book. His four-volume Commentaries on the Laws of England, first published
9 The author’s Introduction and Explanation appear on one large sheet. A contemporary pamphlet,
not in the collection of the Boston Athenaeum, reprints the Introduction and Explanation and adds
the author’s Explanation of the Branches. A copy of the pamphlet is held in the David M. Rubenstein
Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University.
10 The sheets measure 21 9/16 in. (54.8 cm) high by 17 5/16 in. (44 cm) wide. Although now
unbound, they were once in a red and dark blue leather binding, probably added by the Athenaeum
in the second half of the nineteenth century.
11 The sheets were from the library of Ithiel Town, pioneering architect and civil engineer, who died
in New Haven, Connecticut in 1844.

12 For a survey of likeness and images of Blackstone in various media—portraits and engravings;
statues and stained glass—see Wilfrid Prest & J.H. Baker, “Iconography,” in Blackstone and His
Commentaries: Biography, Law, History (ed. Wilfrid Prest, 2009).
13 See John V. Orth, “Blackstone,” in The Oxford Companion to Legal History 359 (ed. Markus D.
Dubber & Christopher Tomlins, 2019).

14 James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. 468 (1791) (Johnson’s comment on Mansfield,
paraphrasing a line in Matthew Prior’s poem “The Chameleon”).

15 See Leo Damrosh, The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age 126 (2019)
(Johnson’s description of Sir John Hawkins, lawyer and author).

16 Wilfrid Prest, William Blackstone: Law and Letters in the Eighteenth Century 310–11 (2008).
Fig. 1.1 “Sir William Blackstone” by an unknown artist. (Credit © National Portrait Gallery,
London)
in 1765 to 1769 and never out of print since, is the single most important book in the
history of the common law. In 1779, John Dunning, prominent lawyer and opposition
MP, wrote a “Letter to a Law Student,” which was published and achieved widespread
1.2 Imagining Blackstone’s Commentaries 5
circulation, not just in England.17 Dunning included a helpful list of “books necessary
for your personal instruction.” Prominent among them was “Blackstone,” with the
admonition: “on the second reading turn to the references.” Elegantly written and
bearing all the hallmarks of the Enlightenment, Blackstone’s Commentaries soon
formed part of every gentleman’s library, being joined over the next few years by
Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776) and Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire (1776–1788), with both of which it could be favorably compared.
1.2 Imagining Blackstone’s Commentaries
As the anonymous author of The Tree of Legal Knowledge explained in his accompa-
nying Introduction, he was convinced that a visual image of the law as presented in
the Commentaries would make it easier to remember. “The mind more readily grasps
and vividly retains impressions communicated through the sense of perception.” He
added that he was inspired to prepare his visualization of the Commentaries by two
memorable experiences of his own. He had recently viewed the enormous painting
“Christ Rejected” by the prominent English artist Benjamin West, which had toured
America in 1830–32,18 and remembered the expressions on the faces in the picture
with “a distinctness almost equal to visible objects now formed upon the retina” (see
Fig. 1.2). And with a recollection no less distinct he recalled how, poring over an
atlas “in early youth,” he had gained “the Geographical knowledge of this world with
its mighty oceans, boundless continents, indented bays, and serpentine rivers.”
A similar vision had inspired Blackstone, who described his intention in writing
the Commentaries as to provide “a general map of the law, marking out the shape
of the country, its connections and boundaries, its greater divisions and principal
cities.”19 But Blackstone’s most memorable image of the law was a vivid architectural
metaphor:
17 “Copy of a Letter from John Dunning, Esq. to a Gentleman of the Inner Temple; Containing
Directions to the Student,” The European Magazine, vol. 19, p. 417 (Jun. 1791) (identifying “Lin-
coln’s Inn, March 3, 1779” as the original place and date of the letter), reprinted in The Carolina
Law Repository, vol. 2, p. 223 (1815).
18 Benjamin West, “Christ Rejected” (1814) (200 × 260 in.). First exhibited in London and seen
by 240,000 paying visitors, the painting was shown in various locations on its American tour. See
Helmut von Erffa & Allen Staley, The Paintings of Benjamin West 359 (1986). When and where
the author of The Tree of Legal Knowledge saw West’s painting is not known. Since 1878 “Christ
Rejected” has been in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia.
19 1 Bl. Com. 35. Citations to Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England
(1765–69) (abbreviated Bl. Com.) are to the Oxford Blackstone, general editor Wilfrid Prest,
published in four volumes in 2016. The Oxford Blackstone reprints the text of the first edition
of each volume and indicates changes Blackstone made in later editions in a separate section at the
back. For more information concerning citation of the Commentaries, see John V. Orth, “‘Catch a
Falling Star’: The Bluebook and Citing Blackstone’s Commentaries,” 2020 U. Ill. L. Rev. Online
125 (July 10, 2020).
Fig. 1.2 “Christ Rejected” by Benjamin West. (Credit Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of
the Fine Arts, Philadelphia)
We inherit an old Gothic castle, erected in the days of chivalry, but fitted up for a modern
inhabitant. The moated ramparts, the embattled towers, and the trophied halls, are magnif-
icent and venerable, but useless. The inferior apartments, now converted into rooms of
convenience, are chearful [sic] and commodious, though their approaches are winding and
difficult.20
Blackstone was well aware that English law changed over time: “the rise, progress,
and gradual improvements of the laws of England,” as he described it.21 The reno-
vations to the old Gothic castle indicate as much, but an organic metaphor seems
not to have occurred to him. In his earlier Treatise on the Law of Descents, Black-
stone had provided a visual aid to understanding English law’s conception of blood
relationships, which many legal authors over the centuries illustrated with an arbor
consanguinitatis, a “family tree.” But, disappointingly, Blackstone chose instead a
Table of Consanguinity, a simple diagram illustrating the “astonishing… number of
lineal ancestors which every man has”22 (see Fig. 1.3). When, a century later, a Yale
20 3 Bl. Com. 268. See Prest, Blackstone 67 (“This elaborate architectural-cum-historical

metaphor… seems entirely of Blackstone’s own contriving. Nothing quite comparable in scale
or specificity of reference appears in the early modern legal canon.”).
21 4 Bl. Com. 400 (title of chapter 33).
22 2 Bl. Com. 203–04.
law professor prepared “charts to accompany Blackstone’s Commentaries” for the

assistance of his students, they were equally static23 (see Figs. 1.4 and 1.5).
It was the imagination of the anonymous North Carolina “gentleman of the
bar” that animated the Commentaries, turning it into a tree, a living metaphor for
the growth and development of English law.24 The “life-giving soil” out of which
the common law grew was a mixture of natural and revealed law; its roots were
customs and ancient rules adopted from Roman and canon law (“general customs,”
“particular laws,” and “particular customs”). The role of modern statutes was
distinctly secondary, personified as a barefoot “husbandman,” dwarfed beside the
enormous tree—an image of which Blackstone, who thought statutes often did more
harm than good, would have approved.25
Picturing the common law in this way minimized the role of human agency
in its creation. It was a natural growth, with roots deep in reason and revelation.
While the details displayed on its spreading branches were the product of human,
specifically judicial decisions, they were not the product of one great law-giver but
the sum of decisions made over centuries by innumerable, mostly forgotten judges.
In consequence, a system of multiple, complex, occasionally astounding rules—
illustrated on The Tree and rapidly summarized by the author in his Explanation
of the Branches—could be given an air of authority and inevitability. The student’s
job was to master its “methodical divisions and subdivisions” and to admire the
majestic product of the ages.
Because Blackstone organized all English law under the headings of rights and
wrongs,26 allocating two volumes of the Commentaries to each, The Tree of Legal
Knowledge has two great branches. Rights are further divided into rights of persons
and rights of things, each with its own volume; and wrongs, into private wrongs
and public wrongs, each also assigned a volume. Accordingly, as imagined by the
anonymous attorney, The Tree’s two great branches divide in two, each with many
smaller branches.
The author’s accompanying Explanation of the Branches describes the labels
attached to each branch and twig, but several remarkable facts about The Tree of
23 William C. Robinson, Common Law Charts to Accompany Blackstone’s Commentaries (1872).

24 It is difficult not to be reminded of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of
Paradise. See Gen. 2:9.
25 See 1 Bl. Com. 70 (“It hath been an antient [sic] observation in the laws of England, that whenever
a standing rule of law, of which the reason perhaps could not be remembered or discerned, hath
been wantonly broke in upon by statutes or new resolutions, the wisdom of the rule hath in the end
appeared from the inconveniences that have followed the innovation.”).
26 Blackstone’s division of English law into rules concerning rights and rules concerning wrongs
was suggested by his definition of law as “a rule of civil conduct prescribed by the supreme power
in a state, commanding what is right and prohibiting what is wrong.” 1 Bl. Com. 44. Hardly original,
this definition of law goes back at least as far as Cicero in the first century B.C. See Cicero, 11
Philippics 12 (sanctio justa, jubens honesta, et prohibens contraria) (“a just ordinance, commanding
what is right and prohibiting the contrary”), cited at 1 Bl. Com. 118.
Fig. 1.3 Blackstone’s Table of Consanguinity. (Credit Rare Book Collection, Lillian Goldman Law
Library, Yale Law School)
Fig. 1.4 Charts to accompany Blackstone’s Commentaries: Rights. (Credit Rare Book Collection,
Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School)
Fig. 1.5 Charts to Accompany Blackstone’s Commentaries: Wrongs. (Credit Rare Book Collec-
tion, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School)
Legal Knowledge should be noted. First, The Tree depicts the law exactly as described
by Blackstone seventy years earlier, including the traditional rights of the monarch,
the aristocracy, and the Church, which are elaborately and artistically illustrated. It
is notorious that Blackstone had little to say about the law of contract, which had
developed rapidly in the years after he published. Consequently, that increasingly
important body of law barely appears on The Tree of Legal Knowledge.
On both sides of the Atlantic, scholarly lawyers had been busily producing anno-
tated editions of Blackstone’s Commentaries. But by the 1830s, judicial decisions
and statutes in England had rendered so much of it out of date that annotated editions
could not keep up. Even as the North Carolina lawyer was painstakingly illustrating
the Commentaries of many years ago, Henry John Stephen in England was at work
on his four-volume New Commentaries on the Laws of England (Partly Founded on
Blackstone) that appeared in 1841 and held the field through twenty editions until
1950.
More remarkable than the absence of contemporary English law on The Tree is
the absence of American law, despite the fact that as early as 1803 legal scholar St.
George Tucker had published an Americanized Commentaries, complete with notes
on the U.S. Constitution and laws.27 By contrast, the “Constitution” that appears
on the branch of The Tree of Legal Knowledge devoted to the rights of persons,
is the unwritten English Constitution of the eighteenth century.28 Rather than the
American Bill of Rights, The Tree sports a banner held by an eagle blazoned with
Blackstone’s list of five auxiliary rights that protect the three great rights of life,
liberty, and property: first, “The Constitution and privileges of Parliament”; second,
“The restraints imposed on the King’s Prerogative”; third, “The right of applying to
Courts of Justice for redress”; fourth, “The right of petitioning the King”; and fifth,
“The right of having arms for self defence.”29
Although Blackstone’s Commentaries outlived its usefulness in England, in
America it continued to thrive. There was no national legislature in the new federal
republic with authority to undertake wholesale legal reform. Each state was left to
develop the law for itself, and state legislatures generally deferred to the courts,
27 St. George Tucker, Blackstone’s Commentaries: with Notes of Reference to the Constitution and
Laws, of the Federal Government of the United States, and of the Commonwealth of Virginia (5
vols., 1803). Tucker was Professor of Law and Police at the College of William and Mary from
1790 to 1804.
28 The English Constitution is still “unwritten.” In 2019 it was described by Britain’s highest court
as a collection of “common law, statutes, conventions and practices.” See R. (on the application of
Miller) v. The Prime Minister, [2019] UKSC 41.
29 1 Bl. Com. 136–39. The fifth auxiliary right—the right of having arms for self-defense—is of
obvious significance in the current debate about the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to
keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” See New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn. v. Bruen, 2022
WL 2,251,305, 142 S.Ct. 2111, 2177 (U.S. 2022) (Breyer, J., dissenting.).
1.3 “Published by Turner and Hughes” 11
where Blackstone was long accepted as unquestioned authority. Perhaps the class-
based English law of the eighteenth century particularly suited conditions in North
Carolina and other Southern states with their hierarchical social structures and large
enslaved populations. Because slavery found no place in Blackstone’s Commen-
taries,30 there was no need for the author to find a place for it on The Tree of Legal
Knowledge.
The Tree’s author did make one curious change, not to Blackstone’s statement
of the law, but to his presentation of it. Blackstone began with rights, then turned
to wrongs. So readers of the Commentaries would encounter the law in this order:
rights of persons, rights of things, private wrongs, public wrongs. But viewers of The
Tree of Legal Knowledge, if scanning from left to right, would see the branches in the
reverse order: public wrongs, private wrongs, rights of things, rights of persons. The
change was quite intentional. The rights of persons, the author explained, constitute
“the first or right branch of this tree,” and public wrongs or crimes “the last or left
branch.” So the author agreed with Blackstone’s priorities, but “read” The Tree from
right to left. Whether or not this interfered with the goal of assisting a student to
remember the arrangement of the Commentaries, it did have the effect of putting the
law of public wrongs on the left, or sinister, side of The Tree.
1.3 “Published by Turner and Hughes”
Henry D. Turner and Nelson B. Hughes, publishers of The Tree of Legal Knowledge,
were proprietors of the North Carolina Bookstore located at the corner of Fayetteville
and Morgan Streets in central Raleigh, across from the imposing Greek Revival
capitol building then under construction. Their store so impressed a visitor from
Richmond in 1834, who had not expected to find so much “literary taste” in the
rural state, that he wrote a glowing description on his return home.31 “The store of
Messrs. Turner and Hughes… not only offers a very large collection of books, but is
fitted up so handsomely, and with so many inducements to attract the curious, that
it is crowded at every hour of the day with those who come to pass an hour in the
pleasantest lounge that can be imagined.” The store stocked “every newly published
work, a great variety of literary periodicals, the daily papers, [and] portfolios of
30 “Pure and proper slavery does not, nay cannot, subsist in England; such I mean, whereby an
absolute and unlimited power is given to the master over the life and fortune of the slave.” 1 Bl.
Com. 411. In fact, as every North Carolinian in 1838 was well aware, slavery certainly did subsist
in North Carolina, and only a few years earlier, the state Supreme Court had held that the master’s
power over the slave was indeed absolute and unlimited. State v. Mann, 13 N.C. (2 Dev.) 263 (1829)
(“The power of the master must be absolute to render the submission of the slave perfect.”). See
John V. Orth, “When Analogy Fails: The Common Law and State v. Mann,” 87 N.C. L. Rev. 979
(2009).
31 Farmers’ Register (Richmond, Va.), 26 Nov. 1834.
prints.” In 1838 Turner & Hughes boasted that they had on hand all the law books
necessary for a “COMPLETE LAW LIBRARY.”32 So successful was the North
Carolina Bookstore that in 1841 the firm opened a branch in New York under the
charge of the enterprising Mr. Turner.33
In connection with their Raleigh store, Turner & Hughes established a printing and
binding department, “probably the first of any dimensions in the State,”34 producing
a variety of titles. In 1837 they secured the contract with the state to publish and
market the two-volume Revised Statutes of North Carolina, which went on sale (for
nine dollars) in the same year as The Tree of Legal Knowledge.35 Over the following
years, the firm specialized in publishing legal materials, particularly volumes of
North Carolina law reports.36 In addition, they produced Turner & Hughes’s North
Carolina Almanac, “one of the most widely circulated almanacs of the ante-bellum
period.”37
After Turner and Hughes dissolved their partnership in 1846, Turner continued
as sole proprietor of the North Carolina Bookstore. He devised a notable “system
of conveying books over the State by means of wagons specially adapted to the
purpose,” which “made regular visits to the University at Chapel Hill and other
schools in the State, as well as bringing stock from distant markets to the city.”38 The
almanac continued to appear, now under the title Turner’s North Carolina Almanac.
When Turner died in 1866, James H. Enniss took over publication of the almanac,
continuing to use Turner’s name, although in 1907 Pinckney C. Enniss, the son
of James H. Enniss, renamed it the Turner-Enniss North Carolina Almanac and
produced it until 1915.
32 Raleigh Register, 30 April 1838.

33 Turner announced in the New York press that in addition to stocking “every variety of Books,
Stationery, etc.,” he continued “to act as Principal Agent for the sale of Beckwith’s Anti-Dyspeptic
Pills.” Bentley’s Miscellany (American ed.), vol. 8, issue 2 (1 Aug. 1841). The advertisement
included a testimonial to the effectiveness of the pills from Beverly Tucker, a law professor at the
College of William and Mary, and the son of St. George Tucker, who had produced the Americanized
edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries in 1803.
34 Guion Griffis Johnson, Ante-Bellum North Carolina: A Social History 811 (1937).
35 Although published by Turner & Hughes, the Revised Statutes were printed by Tuttle, Bennet,
and Chisholm in Boston, leading to criticism in the Raleigh Register, 23 Dec. 1837. Volume two of
the Revised Statutes included, in addition to the North Carolina statutes, several important English
documents, including Magna Carta. See John V. Orth, “The Past Is Never Dead: Magna Carta in
North Carolina,” 94 N.C. L. Rev. 1635 (2016).
36 E.g., Iredell’s North Carolina Reports (1841); Martin’s North Carolina Reports (1843); Battle’s
North Carolina Reports (1844); Taylor’s North Carolina Reports (1844).

37 Johnson, Ante-Bellum North Carolina 811.
38 Moses Neal Amis, Historical Raleigh: With Sketches of Wake County (from 1771) 76 (1913).
1.5 Lithographed by J. H. Bufford 13
1.4 Dedicated to William Gaston
In an elaborate full-page dedication, the unnamed author of The Tree of Legal Knowl-
edge “respectfully inscribed” his work to William Gaston, recently appointed to the
North Carolina Supreme Court.39 A well-regarded lawyer and successful politician,
Gaston had served in both the North Carolina Senate and House of Commons, as well
as in the United States House of Representatives. In the state Senate in 1818 he had
chaired the joint legislative committee that framed the act creating the three-member
Supreme Court, the state’s first purely appellate judicial body.40
Gaston’s appointment to the Court in 1833 attracted considerable attention and
some controversy, not because of any lack of qualification, but because he was a
prominent Roman Catholic41 in a state with a constitutional ban on office holding by
any person “who shall deny… the truth of the Protestant religion.”42 At a convention
called in 1835 to amend the state constitution, Gaston ingeniously justified taking
office by arguing that as a Catholic he did not deny the truth of the Protestant religion.
“There is no affirmative doctrine embraced by Protestants generally, which is not
religiously professed also by Catholics,” he said. “The latter hold that the former
err, not in what they believe, but in what they disbelieve.”43 Gaston led the fight to
end the religious test for office altogether, delivering an eloquent two-day oration on
the subject, but succeeded only in having the word “Christian” substituted for the
word “Protestant” in the amendment that was subsequently sent to the voters and
adopted.44
1.5 Lithographed by J. H. Bufford
In the small print at the foot of the dedication page, appears the legend “J.H. Buffords
Lithog’y 136, Nassau-st N.Y.” Although The Tree of Legal Knowledge had been
advertised as an “Engraving,” which meant printed from a design etched on a metal
39 Under the North Carolina Constitution of 1776, judges were appointed by joint ballot of both
houses of the General Assembly. N.C. Const. of 1776, Sect. XIII.
40 1818 Laws of N.C. 3. Prior to the creation of the Supreme Court, appeals were heard by the Court
of Conference, composed of trial judges.

41 Daniel Hutchinson, “Roman Catholics,” in Religious Traditions of North Carolina 266, 268 (ed.
W. Glenn Jonas, Jr., 2018). See Barbara A. Jackson, “Called to Duty: Justice William J. Gaston,”
94 N.C. L. Rev. 2051 (2016), in which Jackson, then herself a justice of the North Carolina Supreme
Court, argued that Gaston’s religion influenced his judicial decisions, particularly his decisions in
cases involving slaves.
42 N.C. Const. of 1776, Sect. XXXII.
43 Proceedings and Debates of the Convention of North Carolina 268 (1836).
44 Amend. 1835, art. IV, § 2.
plate, it was in fact a lithograph, printed from drawing a waxy image on porous
limestone. John Henry Bufford was a pioneer of the technique and his reputation at the
time rivaled that of his contemporary lithographer Nathaniel Currier, who later joined
with James Merritt Ives to form the enormously successful firm of Currier & Ives.
Although Bufford had been trained in Boston and after 1840 located his lithography
business there, for the last half of the 1830s he operated his shop in New York.45
While Bufford was himself a competent artist, he most often worked from designs
supplied by others. Since The Tree was emphatically claimed to be entirely “a North-
Carolina ‘notion’—being in its inception, design and finish, the production of North-
Carolina heads,” it appears that it was the anonymous lawyer who was responsible
for the illustrations.
1.6 Imagining the Anonymous Author
Published by Turner & Hughes, dedicated to William Gaston, lithographed by J.H.

Bufford, The Tree of Legal Knowledge was authored by an unnamed “attorney at
law.” There were few clues to his identity. He was a North Carolinian. He had been
raised in a home with books, having studied an atlas “in early youth.” He was an art
lover, having seized the opportunity of its American tour to view Benjamin West’s
masterpiece, “Christ Rejected.” From The Tree itself one could see that he had artistic
talent. And it was obvious from his detailed Explanation of the Branches that he had
studied Blackstone’s Commentaries intensively, even obsessively.
He was also well read in serious, if somewhat somber, literature. In his general
Explanation he quoted (without attribution) lines from Edward Young’s poem “The
Complaint, or Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality” (1742) and from the
more recent cautionary long poem The Course of Time (1827) by Robert Pollok.
On The Tree itself, he attached a cartouche to a branch of the Rights of Things
containing images of a sheep, bee, and goose with the words “The Sheep, the Goose,
the Bee/Govern the World these Three/Parchment, Pens, and Wax”—apparently a
reference to a poem by William Winstanley (1733), ending “For Deeds, or Dead
Men’s Wills.”
After its publication in 1838 The Tree of Legal Knowledge disappeared from North
Carolina sources. Finally, almost fifty years later, it was mentioned in the Tarboro
Southerner, the local newspaper of the county seat of Edgecombe County in Eastern
North Carolina:
TREE OF LEGAL KNOWLEDGE. – Perhaps it is not generally known that Mr. Ben
Lavender, the father of Mrs. H.D. Teel, of Tarboro, is the author of the perfect “Tree of
Legal Knowledge.” It is only a few of the old lawyers, who have it. We only know of one,
45See David Tatum, “John Henry Bufford, American Lithographer,” Proceedings of the American
Antiquarian Society, vol. 86, part 1 (April 1976).
1.6 Imagining the Anonymous Author 15
that being in the office of the late Judge Battle. Information as to who has another will be
gratefully received by the editor.46
A few months later, the same paper published the obituary of Agnes Helena Teel,
who had died of typhoid fever at the seaside in Beaufort, North Carolina, where she
had gone in hopes of recovery.47 Born in 1832, she had been educated in Emmittsburg,
Md., a center of American Catholicism.48 Most of her obituary was devoted to her
religion. “She has lived a constant, practical Roman Catholic lady in this, one of the
most enlightened and refined Protestant communities,” where she was “esteemed and
beloved by all.” She died “fortified by the sacraments” of “our blessed mother, the
Church.” Her remains were brought home to Tarboro by her “bereft husband” Henry
Dockery Teel and the Rev. J.J. Reilly and temporarily interred before being moved
to “the consecrated cemetery of her ancestry” in Washington, North Carolina.49
Twenty years later The Tree of Legal Knowledge was mentioned once again in the
press. In 1900 the Raleigh Times carried the following report:
Mr. P.C. Enniss has found two copies of a rare work by a North Carolinian named Lavinder
[sic], dedicated to Judge Gaston. It is entitled “The Tree of Legal Knowledge,” and is an
analysis of Blackstone with a fine introduction.50
Pinckney C. Enniss had succeeded his father as publisher of Turner’s North

Carolina Almanac, and this connection to Henry Turner may explain his knowl-
edge of the existence of The Tree of Legal Knowledge and of the name, if somewhat
garbled, of its author.
46 Tarboro Southerner, 20 May 1880. William Horn Battle, a native of Edgecombe County, who
had died in 1879, taught law at the University of North Carolina from 1845 to 1866 and was a justice
of the North Carolina Supreme Court from 1852 to 1867.
47 Tarboro Southerner, 23 Sept. 1880. Mrs. Teel had contracted the disease “about three months”
earlier.
48 Agnes H. Lavender’s name appears on the roster of St. Joseph’s Academy in Emmittsburg, Md.
for the years 1842 and 1843. See Provincial Archives of the Daughters of Charity. St. Joseph’s
Academy, the first free parochial school for Catholic girls in America, had been founded in 1810 by
Elizabeth Ann Seton (later known as Mother Seton and canonized in 1975). Mother Seton founded
the Sisters of Charity in the United States in 1809. The Sisters of Charity joined the Company of
the Daughters of Charity in 1850.
49 “As the early nineteenth century progressed, small Catholic congregations emerged in Wash-
ington, Wilmington, Fayetteville, and Raleigh.” Hutchinson, Religious Traditions 268. The diocese
of Charleston, S.C., encompassing North and South Carolina and Georgia, was established in 1820,
and in 1868 a separate Apostolic Vicariate of North Carolina was created. The 1890 U.S. Census
of Religious Bodies, the first to count church members, reported 2,640 Catholics in North Carolina
out of a population of 1,617,949.
50 Raleigh Times, 16 June 1900.
1.7 Ben Lavender
In 1977 a copy of the Family Record from the Lavender Family Bible was deposited in
the North Carolina State Archives.51 As might have been expected from the obituary
for Ben Lavender’s daughter, the Bible is the Douay-Rheims version, the approved
English translation of the Latin Vulgate, the official Bible of the Roman Catholic
Church. Catholics were a tiny minority in North Carolina in the early nineteenth
century. In 1833, when William Gaston was appointed to the state Supreme Court,
Bishop John England of Charleston, whose diocese included North Carolina, counted
only 500 Catholics in the state.52 It can hardly be a coincidence that Lavender chose
to dedicate The Tree of Legal Knowledge to his most prominent co-religionist.
According to the Family Record, Benjamin Avery Lavender was born on 10 April
1808. On 9 February 1831 he married Agnes Helena Leroy in a Catholic ceremony.
She died on 29 October 1832, three days after giving birth to Agnes Helena Lavender,
later Mrs. H.D. Teel. Within two years, Lavender remarried. His new wife Margaret
Thomas Alston brought significant property to the marriage. Although at that time
married women lost control of their own property,53 a prenuptial agreement provided
that the property Margaret had received from her father, John Alston, including
“slaves and interests in slaves and land,”54 be protected by being placed in a trust
for her “sole and separate use.”55 Perhaps the family stability and economic security
brought by his marriage to Margaret freed Lavender to work on The Tree of Legal
Knowledge.
51 Xerox copies and a transcription of the Family Record were donated by Helen Leary of Raleigh,
N.C., a professional genealogist. At the time, the Bible was owned by John Egan Partin of
Walterboro, S.C. State Archives of North Carolina.
52 Oliver H. Orr, Jr., “A Principle in Faith for North Carolinians,” Raleigh News & Observer, 6 Nov.
1960, p. 40.
53 In the volume of the Commentaries devoted to the “rights of things,” that is, property law,
Blackstone lists marriage as a method by which a husband acquired “property in goods and chattels”
of his wife and the right to the rents and profits of her real property. 2 Bl. Com. 433. If the woman
brought inheritable real property to the marriage, the husband became entitled to hold the lands for
his life if he had first produced live issue “which was capable of inheriting her estate.” The husband’s
interest was called “tenancy by curtesy.” 2 Bl. Com. 126. Lavender conscientiously includes these
interests on the branch of The Tree of Legal Knowledge devoted to the rights of things.
54 See Browning v. Lavender, 104 N.C. 69, 10 S.E. 77 (1889) (concerning a dispute over the sale
of land from the Margaret Alston Lavender Trust).

55 A trust created for the sole and separate use of a married woman was a device used to prevent a
married woman’s property from passing into the control of her husband or her husband’s creditors. It
became unnecessary in North Carolina after the adoption of the new state Constitution in 1868. See
John V. Orth and Paul Martin Newby, The North Carolina State Constitution 189–90 (2d ed., 2013)
(commenting on Article X, section 4 of the current North Carolina Constitution, which repeats the
earlier provision that the property of a married woman “shall be and remain the sole and separate
estate and property of such female”).
1.7 Ben Lavender 17
Ironically, even as he was carefully reproducing Blackstone’s catalog of the “abso-

lute” rights of man, Lavender was being supported by slave labor. And while illus-
trating pre-industrial English law, he was also investing in the new technology of the
Industrial Revolution. A private act passed by the North Carolina General Assembly
in 1835 granted Lavender and William Tannahill, one of the trustees of his wife’s
trust, a fifteen-year monopoly on steam navigation on the Pamlico and Tar River.56
Over the next twenty-five years, Lavender and Margaret had six children, two of
whom died in childhood. The Lavender family moved frequently among properties
in North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland. By 1850 they were settled in Baltimore
where Lavender acquired a substantial amount of real property.57 In 1853 he made
a public offer to exchange some of the land for stock in the Baltimore & Ohio Rail-
road.58 Ever entrepreneurial, Lavender was a founder and first president of the Balti-
more Cemetery Company.59 And in 1854 he and a partner patented a new method for
making “reed hemp,” described as “useful for making paper, cordage, rope, bagging,
matting, and other coarse fabrics.”60
Margaret died in 1859 and two years later Lavender married his third wife,
Kate Pearson, and returned to North Carolina, settling at Pleasant Hill, in Halifax
County, property included in the Margaret Alston Lavender Trust.61 There he fathered
two more children. Although licensed to practice law, Lavender never appeared as
attorney of record in any reported appellate case in North Carolina. Nor is his name
ever mentioned again in any further connection with Blackstone or the Commen-
taries. Ben Lavender died at Pleasant Hill age 84 on 4 June 1892, his body interred
in the Catholic cemetery in Halifax.62
56 1836 Laws of North Carolina c. 150. Today the Pamlico and Tar Rivers are treated separately,
although the Pamlico River is in fact the lower course of the Tar River. Using older variant names,
the statute refers to the Pamlico and Tar River both as the “Pamptico and Tar River” and as the
“Tar and Pamtico River.” See William Powell, The North Carolina Gazetteer 370 (1968) (reporting
early variants of Pamlico as “Pamtico” and “Pampticough”).
57 U.S. Census (1850) (listing Lavender’s real estate as valued at $23,800).
58 Baltimore Sun, 17 March 1853.
59 Baltimore Sun, 18 Nov. 1850. A long-running dispute concerning the obligation to pay for paving a
road that served the cemetery, led to two reported cases: Baltimore Cemetery Co. v. First Independent
Church, 13 Md. 117 (1859), and Baltimore v. Bouldin, 23 Md. 328 (1865).
60 Patent no. 10,722 (4 April 1854). Thereafter the patent was transferred to other owners. See
Annual Report of the Commissioner of Patents (1868).

61 In her will Margaret exercised her power under the trust to provide for her husband for his life.
Margaret’s will and a codicil were executed in New York, where she had gone for “an important
surgical operation.” Probated in New York in 1859, her will and codicil were also probated in North
Carolina because she was devising, among other things, North Carolina property. Will of Margaret
Thomas [Alston] Lavender, Halifax, N.C. Probate Court (1878). The nineteen-year delay of probate
in North Carolina is unexplained. See also Browning v. Lavender, 104 N.C. 69, 10 S.E. 77 (1889).
62 Scotland Neck Democrat, 9 June 1892 (reporting the death on 4 June and interment on 6 June).
1.8 Blackstone’s Ghost
The Tree of Legal Knowledge may have vanished leaving few traces, but for the rest
of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, Blackstone continued to influence
American and North Carolina legal education. Law professors routinely based their
instruction on the Commentaries. Even as Yale law students in the 1870s and 1880s
studied Blackstonian charts, Professor John Manning, who succeeded Judge Battle
as a law professor at the University of North Carolina, was preparing “commen-
taries on Blackstone” for classroom use.63 And at nearby Trinity (now Duke) Law
School, Dean Samuel Mordecai based his published Law Lectures on the Commen-
taries, proudly declaring that North Carolina preserves “in its integrity more than
does any other state and, in some particulars, more than does England herself, the
best principles of the common law.” Mordecai attributed this to the fact that the
state’s population is “but little mixed with other than that of the mother country,”64
conveniently overlooking the fact that one in three North Carolinians was of African
descent.65
By the early twentieth century, large parts of Blackstone’s Commentaries had
become obsolete, although English property law (Blackstone’s “rights of things”)
remained—and remains—the basis of much American land law.66 And English crim-
inal law (Blackstone’s “public wrongs”) remains relevant, particularly in states like
North Carolina that retain many common law crimes; that is, crimes defined by the
common law rather than by statute.67 For the elements of these crimes, Blackstone’s
Commentaries continues to be cited.68 In the late twentieth and early twenty-first
centuries, after decades of relative neglect, Blackstone reappeared in opinions of
63 See John Manning, Commentaries on the First Book of Blackstone (1899). Manning’s death in
1899 prevented him from completing his project to publish commentaries on the other volumes of
the Commentaries.
64 S.F. Mordecai, Law Lectures: A Treatise From a North Carolina Standpoint on Those Portions
of the First and Second Books of the Commentaries of Sir William Blackstone Which Have Not
Become Obsolete in the United States, p. x (2 vols., 2d ed., 1916).
65 Out of a total population of 2,207,287 counted in the 1910 census, African-Americans numbered
697,843 or 31.62%. Historical Census Browser (University of Virginia, Geospatial and Statistical
Data Center, 2004), mapserver.lib.virginia.edu. Mordecai himself was of German Jewish descent.
See 4 Dictionary of North Carolina Biography 316 (ed. William S. Powell, 6 vols., 1979–96) (entry
on Jacob Mordecai, eldest son of the immigrant Moses Mordecai).
66 See, e.g., 4 Thompson on Real Property Sect. 31.02 n. 1, p. 2 (2d ed. David A. Thomas ed., 2004)
(citing Blackstone’s Commentaries for the common law background).

67 In North Carolina, arson and burglary remain by statute “as defined at the common law,” N.C.
Gen. Stat. Sect. 14–58 (arson); N.C. Gen. Stat. Sect. 14–51 (burglary), while robbery is prosecuted
to this day without any statutory definition. Even the definition of murder is left “as it was at common
law.” See State v. Vance, 328 N.C. 613, 403 S.E.2d 495 (1991).
68 See, e.g., State v Watkins, 218 N.C. App. 94, 100, 720 S.E.2d 844, 848 (2012) (quoting State v.
Sneed, 38 N.C. App. 230, 231–32, 247 S.E.2d 658, 659 (1978) (quoting 4 Bl. Com. 227)).
1.8 Blackstone’s Ghost 19
the U.S. Supreme Court as a guide to the “original understanding” of the American
Constitution.69
Unlike Lavender sixty years earlier, Manning and Mordecai did not repeat Black-
stone’s eighteenth-century text verbatim, but they did organize their material using
the “admirable system” he had laid down in the Commentaries. If The Tree of Legal
Knowledge charted the general “divisions and subdivisions” of the law, Manning
and Mordecai filled in the blank spaces on the map. Into the handy outline provided
by Blackstone they inserted all the relevant North Carolina law that had accumu-
lated since Independence, testimony to the practical organization of the original.
More than structure, Blackstone also supplied the common law baseline from which
all subsequent North Carolina legal developments departed. Perhaps Blackstone’s
greatest contribution to Manning’s and Mordecai’s books was the enormous prestige
of his name. Knowing Blackstone meant knowing the law. Connecting their books
to the master enhanced their credibility—and their books’ salability.70
Even as law students pored over Manning’s and Mordecai’s books, another artist
was re-imagining the law as a giant tree. Prepared by an unnamed commercial artist
for the American Law Book Company, The Law Tree appeared on a folded plate
mounted inside the front cover of the Company’s Quick Search Manual, a 2,500-
page guide to two influential legal encyclopedias.71 Measuring twelve by thirteen
inches—somewhat smaller than the individual images that made up The Tree of Legal
Knowledge—The Law Tree served as a visual index to the Manual (see Fig. 1.6). As
explained in its accompanying text: “This picture should not be regarded merely as
a picture, it is also a working tool for law student and lawyer.”72 The seven branches
of The Law Tree “represent the seven grand divisions of the Law” as presented in
the Manual: persons, property, contracts, torts, crimes, remedies, and government.
Four of the seven branches correspond directly to the four volumes of Blackstone’s
Commentaries and consequently to the four branches of The Tree of Legal Knowledge:
Rights of Persons (persons), Rights of Things (property), Private Wrongs (torts),
Public Wrongs (crimes). In the Commentaries and on The Tree of Legal Knowledge,
remedies and the rules of government were distributed among the four volumes and
69 E.g., Alden v Maine, 527 U.S. 706, 715 (1999); New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn. v. Bruen,
2022 WL 2,251,305, 142 S.Ct. 2111 (U.S. 2022); Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org., 2022
WL 2,276,808, 142 S.Ct. 2228 (U.S. 2022).
70 Not all North Carolina lawyers were uncritical admirers of Blackstone. See Appendix B, “‘A
Very Narrowing Effect upon our Profession’: North Carolina Chief Justice Walter Clark Confronts
Blackstone”.
71 Quick Search Manual: Being a Complete Collection of the Analyses and Cross References in
the Corpus Juris-Cyc System (1926). Although named after the Roman original, the Corpus Juris
referred to here is a multi-volume legal encyclopedia begun in 1914 by the American Law Book
Company. It was discontinued in 1937 and is today supplanted by the West Publishing Company’s
Corpus Juris Secundum. The Cyclopedia of Law and Procedure, commonly referred to as Cyc, is
a 40-volume legal encyclopedia that was completed in 1912.
72 The Law Tree came with instructions how to use it.
First: Select the main limb or grand division that covers your question.
Second: Select the pertinent branch or subhead.
Third: On the branch or subhead select the specific twig or title.
Fig. 1.6 The Law Tree. Top is the unfolded plate. Below are detail views of the same. (Credit Rare
Book Collection, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School)
1.8 Blackstone’s Ghost 21
branches. Only the branch concerning contracts is new, reflecting the growth of that
body of law in the years after Blackstone.
Like Ben Lavender a hundred years earlier, the designer of The Law Tree recog-
nized that “the idea of a tree is particularly apt in the case of the law, which is a
living, growing organism.” Unlike The Tree of Legal Knowledge, rooted in natural
and revealed law and tended by the statutory husbandman, The Law Tree grows in
response to strictly utilitarian demands, “sending forth new shoots and branches as
human activities increase and develop in extent and complexity.” Unlike the colored
lithographs with the artistic embellishments that Lavender designed to illustrate
Blackstone’s Commentaries, The Law Tree is presented in businesslike black and
white. Unlike the balanced branches of The Tree of Legal Knowledge displaying
the elegantia juris of Blackstone’s Commentaries, the seven asymmetrical branches
of The Law Tree writhe across the page. Impossible to imagine as an “ornamental
appendage” in a law office or as the object of a gentleman’s study, The Law Tree
is strictly functional. Whether lacking Blackstone’s moral vision, the law and its
metaphorical tree can continue to thrive remains to be seen.73
73See, e.g., John V. Orth, “Casting the Priests out of the Temple: John Austin and the Relation
between Law and Religion,” in The Weightier Matters of the Law: Essays on Law and Religion 229
(eds. John Witte & Frank S. Alexander, 1988).
Chapter 2
Author’s Introduction
“The established reputation of Judge Blackstone’s commentaries has rendered it

very deservedly the foundation of legal studies.1 Previous to the publication of
the commentaries, the student was compelled to assume Coke’s commentary on
1 Sir William Blackstone was, indeed, a judge—first in the Court of King’s Bench (1770), then in
the Court of Common Pleas (1770–80)—but it is not as a judge that he is remembered. See Harold
Hanbury, “Blackstone as a Judge,” 3 Am J Legal Hist 1 (1959). Instead, he is remembered as the
author of the Commentaries on the Laws of England (4 vols. 1765–69), the single most important
book in the history of the common law.
[Editor’s Note. The text of the author’s Introduction, Explanation, and Explanation of the Branches
are reprinted as in the original. Spelling has not been modernized or made consistent. Foreign phrases
and legal terms are as in the original: sometimes italicized, usually not. Occasional typographical
errors are indicated].
The author’s Introduction and Explanation were printed on one large sheet that accompanied the
illustrations. They also appear in the pamphlet entitled The Tree of Legal Knowledge, to which
was added the author’s Explanation of the Branches.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8696-3_2
24 2 Author’s Introduction
Lyttleton2 as an institute3 and thus commencing his early studies without method,
his subsequent progress was laborious, and his acquisitions unsatisfactory.
In the inception of a study, accurate and logical arrangement is indispensable—
without it the student will always grope in the dark, and, ultimately, find his labours
useless. An early sense of the force of this idea, induced the author to plan and
execute the present work for his own improvement. Its great object is to impress
upon the mind the methodical divisions and subdivisions of the Commentaries and
thus enable the student effectually to master the work and preserve the arrangement
as the general guide of his future studies.”4
To do it in the most forcible manner, has been the object of the author. Believing
that the mind more readily grasps and more vividly retains impressions communi-
cated through the sense of perception, he has clothed the fixed principles of that
science in the garb of material objects. He is induced to think, he has not flattered
himself, in believing that he has chosen the best method to attain his end, when
he remembers with a distinctness almost equal to the visible objects now formed
upon the retina, the expression of features which animate the group in that inimitable
picture of “Christ rejected.”5 Nor is the recollection less distinct of the Geograph-
ical knowledge of this world with its mighty oceans, boundless continents, indented
bays, and serpentine rivers, which was impressed on his mind in early youth by the
lines and shades of an atlas. The author humbly conceives that the “Tree of Legal
Knowledge” will prove as useful in fixing the various divisions and subdivisions of
2 The reference is to Sir Edward Coke’s seventeenth-century Commentary on Sir Thomas Lyttleton’s
fifteenth-century Treatise on Tenures. Coke’s Commentary on Lyttleton (also spelled Littleton)
formed the first part of Coke’s Institutes of the Lawes of England and was traditionally cited as
Co. Litt. Lyttleton’s Tenures was a short summary of English land law, written in Law French, a
legacy of the Norman Conquest. Coke’s English translation and extensive annotations made Coke
on Littleton the foundational book of English property law. Over the centuries after Coke, further
editions with further annotations were published. Beginning legal study with Coke on Littleton was
almost impossibly difficult, as many lawyers lamented. Joseph Story, later a celebrated justice of
the United States Supreme Court, remembered being told to read Coke on Littleton. “It was a very
large folio, with Hargrave and Butler’s notes, which I was required to read also…. I took it up, and
after trying it day after day with very little success, I sat myself down and wept bitterly. My tears
dropped upon the book, and stained its pages.” Joseph Story, Autobiography in The Miscellaneous
Writings of Joseph Story 20 (ed. William Wetmore Story, 1852).
3 An institute is an elementary legal treatise, the name originally referring to the Institutes, a summary
of Roman law, one of the four component parts of the Emperor Justinian’s Corpus Juris Civilis.
4 The first two paragraphs of the author’s Introduction are enclosed in quotation marks, although no
source is indicated. The first paragraph states a commonly expressed assessment of the impact of
Blackstone’s Commentaries on legal education. The second paragraph closely parallels Turner &
Hughes’ announcement of the publication of The Tree of Legal Knowledge in the Raleigh Register,
21 May 1838. For the importance of the Commentaries in North Carolina, see John V. Orth,
“Blackstone’s Ghost: Law and Legal Education in North Carolina,” in Appendix A.
5 “Christ Rejected,” an enormous painting (200 × 260 in.) by the prominent English artist Benjamin
West, was completed in 1814. First exhibited in London and seen by 240,000 paying visitors, the
painting was shown in various locations in America in 1830–32. See Helmut von Erffa & Allen
Staley, The Paintings of Benjamin West 359 (1986). It is unknown when or where the author viewed
the painting. Since 1878 “Christ Rejected” has been in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy
of Fine Arts.
2 Author’s Introduction 25
that abstruse science firmly on the mind, as does the pencil of the artist in pourtraying
the striking events of the past, or the atlas in communicating the knowledge of coun-
tries described by the traveller. To the practioner [sic], also, it is deemed useful in
consolidating his learning, and forming an instructive and ornamental appendage to
an office. The gentleman, too, who is desirous of becoming acquainted with that
system of laws of which ours is principally composed, and which is highly necessary
to every legislator and scholar; will be materially benefitted by its use, especially in
conjunction with the Commentaries.
The author has submitted a brief explanation of the “Tree of Legal Knowledge,”
the principal part of which may be found in the Commentaries with trifling alteration.
Chapter 3
Author’s Explanation
Law is the rule and bond of men’s actions, whereby they are commanded to make
use of their faculties of reason and free-will for the regulation of their conduct.
NATURAL LAW, or the LAW OF NATURE, may be defined to be, those general
principles of Justice deduced by the operation of reason,1 from the natural relation
of things antecedent to positive precept: such as living honestly, hurting nobody,
rendering to every one his own, &c.2
But by the fall of our first parents, human reason became darkened; and as that
in its vigour was necessary to the discovery of these principles, the beneficence of
the Deity interposed and rendered clear its laws by immediate revelation. This was
termed, REVEALED LAW.
Upon these two foundations are based the laws of England. As those who reason
correctly will arrive at the same conclusion, when their premises are the same; the
customs and usages of mankind were formed in obedience to the suggestions of right
by the operation of reason, or in accordance with the precepts of the Almighty. These
rules of action soon became binding from conviction of their propriety by common
consent, under the name of GENERAL CUSTOMS.
1 English lawyers preferred to talk about the “law of reason” rather than natural law or the law of
nature, although the terms were synonymous.
2 Blackstone traces these three general principles to the Corpus Juris Civilis where they are described
as “the whole doctrine of law.” 1 Bl. Com. 40 (citing Inst. 1.1.5). Many attempts have been made
over the years to discover other principles of natural law by finding areas of agreement among many
nations. For one example, see C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man 95–121 (1947).
[Editor’s Note. Citations to Blackstone’s Commentaries, abbreviated Bl. Com., are to the Oxford
Blackstone, edited by Wilfrid Prest and published in four volumes in 2016. The Oxford Blackstone
reprints the text of the first edition of each volume (1765–69) and indicates changes Blackstone
made in later editions in a separate section at the back. The author of The Tree of Legal Knowledge
used an edition of the Commentaries that incorporated all the material that Blackstone added before
he died in 1780. In a few cases the author’s summary of the Commentaries refers to that later
material. This is indicated in the footnotes].
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8696-3_3
28 3 Author’s Explanation
With regard to certain minor considerations, different ideas of propriety existed

in different sections of the same country, and as they did not conflict with the rights
of those out of that particular district, they were permitted and sanctioned under the
name of PARTICULAR CUSTOMS.3
In the administration of justice, certain rules were introduced in particular courts,
which were derived from the digests of Imperial Rome,4 and in later times from the
opinions of the Latin fathers5 and decretal epistles of the Pope6 ; deriving their force,
merely from their adoption. These were styled PARTICULAR LAWS.7
These three roots, GENERAL CUSTOMS, PARTICULAR CUSTOMS, and
PARTICULAR LAWS, springing from the life-giving soil of natural and revealed
law; grew in time into that magnificent tree8 the COMMON LAW OF ENGLAND,
the kindly shelter of whose branches is sought in the remotest parts of the earth, and
whose fruit nourishes the inhabitants of almost every clime where the sun of Liberty
shines.9
That men might know their duty to their fellow men,—to render justice to others
and demand it for themselves, it became necessary to define the rights of man.10
These the Common Law commanded the observance. Violations of these rights were
of course WRONGS. These the Laws forbid. These RIGHTS either appertained to
3 Examples of particular customs that depart from the general custom of primogeniture (inheri-
tance by the eldest son) include Borough English (inheritance by the youngest son) and gavelkind
(inheritance by all sons equally). See 2 Bl. Com. 83 (Borough English); 84–85 (gavelkind). The
reason Borough English and gavelkind do not “conflict with the rights of those out of that particular
district” is that they concern inheritance of land, which is governed by the law of the district where
it is located.
4 Roman law was codified in the sixth century by order of the Emperor Justinian in the Corpus Juris
Civilis, which is composed of the Institutes, the Digest, the Code, and the Novels. Roman law is
commonly referred to as civil law.
5 The Latin fathers were early Christian theologians. The Roman Catholic Church traditionally
regarded Saints Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, and Pope Gregory I as the four great “Latin fathers”.
6 The decrees of the Popes and of Church councils form the basis of canon law. Blackstone is at pains
to emphasize that since the reign of King Henry VIII, they are of no authority in England, although
some “have been admitted and received by immemorial usage and custom in some particular cases,
and in some particular courts.” 1 Bl. Com. 79–80.
7 In the author’s Explanation of the Branches, he summarizes “particular laws” as “the Civil and
Canon laws”.
8 Although the author wants to portray the common law as a “magnificent tree,” he actually shows
a tree damaged by the loss of bark and hosting mistletoe, a hemiparasite that damages the tree.
9 The common law of England spread throughout the English colonies, and Blackstone’s book was
a convenient and portable source of that law. In the penal colony of Australia, for example, the
first shipload of English convicts arrived in 1788 with a set of the Commentaries, which was to
provide the basis of Australian law. See Bruce Kercher, An Unruly Child: A Brief History of Law
in Australia xii (1995).
10 The Atlantic Revolutions of the late eighteenth century made the “rights of man” a subject
of often violent contention. The French revolutionaries issued the Declaration of the Rights of
Man and the Citizen in 1789. In 1791 Thomas Paine published The Rights of Man in reply to
Edmund Burke’s critical Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). Blackstone’s Commen-
taries, although influential with American Revolutionaries, was written before the term acquired
its radical connotations.
3 Author’s Explanation 29
the person of individuals, or else to the property which they might acquire. They
were therefore divided into RIGHTS OF PERSONS and RIGHTS OF THINGS.11
Violations of these rights were injuries, either to separate individuals in person or
property, or else affected the whole community by their evil tendency, and contempt
for the governing power. The latter generally includes the former. The former or
civil injuries, were denominated PRIVATE WRONGS12 ; the latter, or crimes and
misdemeanors, were termed PUBLIC WRONGS.
As these laws existed up to the first year of the reign of Richard 1st, (the time of
legal memory,)13 they form what is termed the LEX NON SCRIPTA, or COMMON
LAW.14
The objects of property became more numerous and diversified as civilization
advanced; changes took place in the opinions and customs of mankind, and it became
necessary that the laws should keep pace with the improvement in the social state.
To that end, the power intrusted with the care of the Public welfare, passed such
acts, or promulgated such edicts as tended to its accomplishment. These form the
LEX SCRIPTA or STATUTE LAW. The reader will perceive it personated by a
husbandman under the tree of the Common Law, with a green bough in one hand,
to engraft upon the branches of that tree representing an enlarging statute; and a
pruning hook in the other to lop off excrescences, indicating a restraining statute.15
The piece being autumnal16 the green bough of the mistletoe17 shows at a glance
what is the Common Law, and what changes have been introduced by statute.
11 Although Blackstone entitles his volume on property law “rights of things,” things—properly
speaking—have no rights, nor is it proper to speak of a person’s rights over things. “A property
right is a relation not between an owner and a thing, but between the owner and other individuals
in reference to things.” Morris Cohen, “Property & Sovereignty,” 13 Corn. L. Q. 8, 12 (1927).
12 Private wrongs or civil injuries are today more commonly called torts.
13 “Time of memory hath been long ago ascertained by the law to commence from the reign of
Richard the first,” that is, Richard the Lionheart, who became King of England in 1189. 2 Bl. Com.
31. The common law had taken shape during the reign of Richard’s father, Henry II, when the king
sent his justices throughout the country with orders to discover and enforce good customs. Customs
that had been used so long that “the memory of man runneth not to the contrary” were presumed to
be valid common law.
14 Blackstone describes the common law as lex non scripta, unwritten law. 1 Bl. Com. 63. By this
he does not mean that the common law cannot be reduced to writing. He himself wrote hundreds
of pages about it. What he means is that the common law is not found in a single authoritative code
or statute but is gathered from the decisions of the courts in individual cases.
15 Green boughs are relatively most common on the branch depicting public wrongs (crimes) because
of the greater volume of legislation on that subject. Blackstone is more than dubious about the
possibility of improving the common law by statute: “For, to say the truth, almost all the perplexed
questions, almost all the niceties, intricacies, and delays (which have sometimes disgraced the
English, as well as other, courts of justice) owe their original not to the common law itself, but to
innovations that have been made in it by acts of parliament.” 1 Bl. Com. 10.
16 It is not clear why the author chose to portray The Tree of Legal Knowledge in the Autumn. He
certainly did not think the common law was approaching its wintry decline.
17 Although damaging to the host tree, mistletoe is considered a symbol of life because it remains
green and bears fruit throughout the winter.

The RIGHTS OF PERSONS, constituting the first or right branch of this tree,18
delineates the rights of man whether absolute19 or relative,20 the classes of society
whether ecclesiastical or lay; civil, military or maritime; and the different degrees of
standing from the king to the peasant,—the form of government, and the heads under
which it is to be contemplated. Interspersed throughout are the insignia, emblems
and mottoes, which denote the rank, precedence, and peculiar province of each.21
The second branch which denotes the RIGHTS OF THINGS, commencing with
the prominent division of real and personal, keeps them distinct22 throughout; and
enables the reader to have constantly before him the kinds of property, the estates
which may be had therein, the various means by which title may be acquired and
lost—making the reader also acquainted with the persons capable of aliening,23 and
of being aliened to, and the different methods of aliening—with deeds, their kinds,
requisites, component parts, how avoided, &c.,24 which bough hangs over the whole
in indication of the fact that almost all property is held by or under deed.25
18 The author does indeed illustrate the rights of persons on the right branch of The Tree of Legal
Knowledge although Blackstone discusses the subject in the first of the four volumes of the Commen-
taries, so Blackstone’s readers encounter the rights of persons first. “Readers” of The Tree from left
to right encounter Blackstone’s topics in reverse order.
19 Following Blackstone, the author defines absolute rights in his Explanation of the Branches as
“Personal Security, Personal Liberty, and Private Property”; that is, the familiar trinity of life, liberty,
and property. 1 Bl. Com. 117–41. These rights are “absolute” in the sense that they are natural or—as
they are more commonly called today—human rights. Even absolute rights are subject to restraint
by law so far as “necessary and expedient for the general advantage of the publick.” 1 Bl. Com. 121.
20 In his Explanation of the Branches, the author divides relative rights into public and private
relative rights. Public relative rights are those that exist between the “governors and the governed.”
Private relative rights are those between “Husband and Wife, Parent and Child, Master and Servant,
and Guardian and Ward.” Blackstone devotes a chapter to each of these private relative rights in
volume one of the Commentaries.
21 The insignia, emblems, and mottoes are some of the “material objects” with which the author
embellished the Tree of Legal Knowledge as an artistic aid to memory of the law. There is no
reference to them in the Commentaries.
22 (author’s footnote) “Among real estates in the class of those held upon condition, are enumerated
Statutes Merchant and Staple and Elegit, which are properly chattels real, and should be enumer-
ated as personality [sic]; but being treated of by Judge Blackstone under the head of estates upon
condition, they are there mentioned.” [The author is here indicating that although Blackstone treats
as real property interests in land that are held as security for repayment of debts under the Statutes
Merchant and Staple and by Elegit, they should properly be treated as personal property (person-
alty)—a rare criticism of Blackstone’s methodical arrangement. 2 Bl. Com. 160–61. The author
returns to this subject in his Explanation of the Branches].
23 Aliening means transferring title to real property by “any method wherein estates are voluntarily
resigned by one man, and accepted by another; whether that be effected by sale, gift, marriage
settlement, devise [will], or other transmission of property by the mutual consent of the parties.” 2
Bl. Com. 287.
24 Avoided means made void, as when a deed is declared to be invalid. A deed may be avoided in
that sense if it lacks any essential element or if it has been defaced or cancelled. 2 Bl. Com. 308–09.
25 Attached to the bough labeled “Deed” is a cartouche containing images of a sheep, bee, and goose.
Under it appear the words “The Sheep, the Goose, the Bee/Govern the World these Three/Parchment,
Pens, and Wax.” The reference may be to a common witticism, or may be a specific reference to
Next in succession, is PRIVATE WRONGS. After expressing the means by which

man may agreeably to law redress his own wrongs without recourse to any tribunal,26
and the redress which the law gives without seeking her aid27 ; the reader is intro-
duced into the various courts where he may obtain redress, informed of the method
of obtaining it, and all the wrongs which he is liable to receive in person or prop-
erty, (below public offences) and the remedy for every injury. These remedies he
will perceive are borne by birds either flying towards the tree, or perched upon its
boughs; with a scroll waving from its beak whereon is written the remedy.28 The first
position indicates injuries committed with force, the last, injuries which flow as the
consequences of some illegal act.29
The last or left branch represents PUBLIC WRONGS. This embraces the nature of
crimes and their punishments, the persons capable of committing them, the method
of redress in criminal courts, the means of preventing their perpetration, and their
William Winstanley’s The New Help to Discourse. Or Wit and Mirth Intermix’d With More Serious
Matters (1733). The answer to the question, “What Creatures are those, some Living, some Dead,
that rule the World?” is “The Sheep, the Goose and the Bee; for the Sheep yields Parchment, the
Goose Quills to write it, and the Bee brings Wax to Seal it:/The Bee the Goose, the Sheep, Do
so maintain the Might/Of Monarchs, King, and States,/That Wrong suppress not Right. The Bee
brings Sealing-Wax,/The Goose our Writing Quills,/The Sheep his Coat, or Parchment-Skin,/For
Deeds, or Dead Mens Wills.” While a wax seal is required for a deed, no seal is in fact necessary
for a will. Title to “almost all property” is derived from a prior owner by deed or will. In certain
circumstances, original title to property may be acquired by adverse possession: possession so long
continued that those with better claims are barred from any legal remedy. By Blackstone’s day, title
acquired other than by deed or will constituted a very small fraction of English property.
26 Redressing one’s own wrongs is described as using justified self-help. It includes self-defense,
retaking one’s property that is wrongfully withheld, and seizing a tenant’s cattle or goods for
non-payment of rent.
27 In a very few cases the law gives a remedy without the need to seek a court order. 3 Bl. Com.
18–20. Two remedies by operation of law—retainer and remitter—are described in the Explanation
of the Branches. By far the most common means of legal redress for private wrongs are by actions
in court.
28 The birds and their scrolls are, obviously, an addition by the author and not mentioned in the
Commentaries. There may here be an echo of the bible verse in which Jesus likens the kingdom of
God to a tree that “groweth up, and becometh greater than all herbs, and shooteth out great branches;
so that the fowls of the air may dwell under the shadow of it.” Mark 4:32 (DRB).
29 An “illegal act” is here considered in its aspect as a private or civil wrong (tort), not as a public or
criminal wrong. A person may be injured by an illegal act that does not involve force or violence,
as for example threats, peaceable ouster from a freehold, and breach of contract.
various kinds: against God and Religion,30 the Commonwealth,31 the Government,
the Laws of Nations32 and Individuals. All the wrongs which may be offered to each
are accurately defined, and the punishments which follow their commission. These
punishments are represented by figures, calculated by their appearance to convey
some idea of their comparative enormity. For a more full and graphic expression,
an index to this branch is annexed.33 That index is introduced in an allegory also,
conveying still a lesson of instruction. A temple appears supported by three massy
columns emblematic of the mixed government of Great Britain, viz. Monarchy,
Aristocracy and Democracy.34 Upon the entablature which they support, rises a finely
chased column representing the British Constitution.35 Capping that column, is the
emblem of the Genius which presides over the destinies of that mighty nation.36
On one hand from a rainbow, that ancient sign of a covenant, of obedience and
30 Crimes “against God and Religion” include apostacy, heresy, blasphemy, offenses against the
church, swearing and cursing, witchcraft, religious imposters, simony, sabbath-breaking, drunken-
ness, and lewdness. 4 Bl. Com. 43–66. Writing almost a century after the notorious Salem witch
trials, Blackstone cautiously observed that, while witchcraft is attested by scripture, it is a “dubious
crime” and added the comment that “it seems to be the most eligible way to conclude, with an
ingenious writer of our own, that in general there has been such a thing as witchcraft; though one
cannot give credit to any particular modern instance of it,” citing an essay by Joseph Addison in
the Spectator (No. 117) (14 July 1711). 4 Bl. Com. 60. A controversial American prosecution for
the common law crime of blasphemy was underway in Massachusetts as the author was preparing
The Tree of Legal Knowledge. Comm. v. Kneeland, 37 Mass. (20 Pick.) 206 (1838). See Leonard
W. Levy, The Law of the Commonwealth and Chief Justice Shaw: The Evolution of American Law,
1830–1860, pp. 43–58 (1957).
31 Crimes “against the common-wealth, or public policy of the kingdom” are crimes against “the
lives and security of private subjects,” which are also crimes “against the king, as the pater-familias
of the nation.” Blackstone lists five such crimes: “offenses against public justice, against the public
peace, against public trade, against the public health, and against the public police or oeconomy
[economy].” 4 Bl. Com. 127–28.
32 Blackstone defined the law of nations as “a system of rules, deducible by natural reason, and
established by universal consent among the civilized inhabitants of the world.” 4 Bl. Com. 66. The
concept goes back to the Romans. Cicero identified the law of nations as applying “among all
nations, at all times, one and the same law.” On the State III: 33. Today the law of nations more
commonly refers to international law, the law governing the relationships between countries.
33 The “index” refers to the final plate of The Tree of Legal Knowledge, illustrating “the mixed
government of Great Britain”.

34 Americans, of course, think of the three branches of government as legislative, executive, and
judicial.
35 Like the common law itself, the British constitution is unwritten. As Britain’s highest court
explained in 2019, “Although the United Kingdom does not have a single document entitled ‘The
Constitution,’ it nevertheless possesses a Constitution, established over the course of our history by
common law, statutes, conventions and practices.” R. (on the application of Miller) v. The Prime
Minister, [2019] UKSC 41.
36 By genius here is meant not “a person endowed with transcendent mental superiority, inven-
tiveness, and ability,” but rather “a peculiar, distinctive, or identifying character: essential nature
or spirit.” See Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, s.v. genius. Atop the column repre-
senting the Constitution stands the emblem of the presiding genius of the British nation, a godlike
young man gesturing to the punishments of crime with his right hand and holding a triumphant
banner in the left.
protection,37 beams a refulgent light; which opens the vision to all the benefits which
flow from obedience to laws, and good government. Plenty with her cornucopia of
profusion, mild, gentle peace, wreathing her civic crowns, commerce with her sisters,
Arts and Science, all revelling in the delights of a millennium.38 But on the other
hand, may be perceived in the darkness that reigns there, “in horrible emblazonry
are limned” the figures of terrific vengeance, breathing forth the punishments which
await each crime.39 “Where passed the shaft” the “trace is found,” and on it written
the chastisement which follows the commission of misdemeanors.40
37 In the book of Genesis, God made a covenant with Noah that the world would never again be
destroyed by flood. The rainbow is the sign of this promise. Gen. 9:11–16.
38 Literally a thousand years, a millennium sometimes refers to a golden age. The reference is to
the prophesied thousand-year reign of Christ at the end of time. See Rev. 20:1–5 (Apocalypse in
the Douay-Rheims Bible).
39 The author is using a poetic image of the punishments for sin to describe the punishments for
crime. The quotation is from Robert Pollok’s once popular long poem, The Course of Time (1827),
in which the narrator is shown an image of “Eternal Death” and a “burning wall” upon which “In
horrible emblazonry, were limned/All shapes, all forms, all modes of wretchedness,/And agony, and
grief, and desperate wo./And prominent in characters of fire,/Where’er the eye could light, these
words you read, ‘Who comes this way—behold, and fear to sin!’”.
40 By “misdemeanors” Blackstone did not mean minor offenses. As he explained, crimes and misde-
meanors “properly speaking, are mere synonymous terms: though, in common usage, the word,
‘crimes,’ is made to denote such offences as are of a deeper and more atrocious dye; while smaller
faults, and omissions of less consequence, are comprised under the gentler name of ‘misdemeanors’
only.” 4 Bl. Com. 5. The author’s poetic image is drawn from Edward Young’s “The Complaint,
or Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality” (1742): “All men think all men mortal, but
themselves:/Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate\Strikes through their wounded hearts
the sudden dread;\But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air,\Soon close; where pass’d the
shaft, no trace is found”.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the
collection of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the
individual works in the collection are in the public domain in the
United States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright
law in the United States and you are located in the United
States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from copying,
distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works
based on the work as long as all references to Project
Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope that you will
support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting free
access to electronic works by freely sharing Project
Gutenberg™ works in compliance with the terms of this
agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg™ name
associated with the work. You can easily comply with the terms
of this agreement by keeping this work in the same format with
its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when you share it
without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also
govern what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most
countries are in a constant state of change. If you are outside
the United States, check the laws of your country in addition to
the terms of this agreement before downloading, copying,
displaying, performing, distributing or creating derivative works
based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg™ work. The
Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright
status of any work in any country other than the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project

Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other

immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must
appear prominently whenever any copy of a Project
Gutenberg™ work (any work on which the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed,
viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the

United States and most other parts of the world at no
cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may
copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the
Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or
online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the
country where you are located before using this eBook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is

derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to
anyone in the United States without paying any fees or charges.
If you are redistributing or providing access to a work with the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of
paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use
of the work and the Project Gutenberg™ trademark as set forth
in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is

posted with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and
distribution must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through
1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed by the copyright holder.
Additional terms will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™
License for all works posted with the permission of the copyright
holder found at the beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project

Gutenberg™ License terms from this work, or any files
containing a part of this work or any other work associated with
Project Gutenberg™.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute
this electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1
with active links or immediate access to the full terms of the
Project Gutenberg™ License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form,
including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if
you provide access to or distribute copies of a Project
Gutenberg™ work in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or
other format used in the official version posted on the official
Project Gutenberg™ website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at
no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a
means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project
Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,

performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™
works unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or

providing access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works provided that:
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the
method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The
fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark,
but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty
payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on
which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your
periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked
as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information
about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who

notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that
s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and
discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project
Gutenberg™ works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of

any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in
the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90
days of receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project

Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different
terms than are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain
permission in writing from the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project Gutenberg™
trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3
below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend

considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on,
transcribe and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright
law in creating the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite
these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the
medium on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,”
such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt
data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other
medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES -

Except for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in
paragraph 1.F.3, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation, the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark,
and any other party distributing a Project Gutenberg™ electronic
work under this agreement, disclaim all liability to you for
damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees. YOU
AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE,
STRICT LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH
OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH
1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER
THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR
ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF
THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If

you discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of
receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you
paid for it by sending a written explanation to the person you
received the work from. If you received the work on a physical
medium, you must return the medium with your written
explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the
defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu
of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or
entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.
If the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund
in writing without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set

forth in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’,
WITH NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS
OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR
ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied

warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this
agreement violates the law of the state applicable to this
agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the
maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable
state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of
this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the

Foundation, the trademark owner, any agent or employee of the
Foundation, anyone providing copies of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works in accordance with this agreement, and any
volunteers associated with the production, promotion and
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, harmless
from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that
arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project
Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or
deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any Defect
you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of

Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new
computers. It exists because of the efforts of hundreds of
volunteers and donations from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the

assistance they need are critical to reaching Project
Gutenberg™’s goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™
collection will remain freely available for generations to come. In
2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was
created to provide a secure and permanent future for Project
Gutenberg™ and future generations. To learn more about the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your
efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the
Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project

Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-
profit 501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the
laws of the state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by
the Internal Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal
tax identification number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax
deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and
your state’s laws.
The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500

West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact
links and up to date contact information can be found at the
Foundation’s website and official page at
www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to

the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without
widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission
of increasing the number of public domain and licensed works
that can be freely distributed in machine-readable form
accessible by the widest array of equipment including outdated
equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are particularly
important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws

regulating charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of
the United States. Compliance requirements are not uniform
and it takes a considerable effort, much paperwork and many
fees to meet and keep up with these requirements. We do not
solicit donations in locations where we have not received written
confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or
determine the status of compliance for any particular state visit
www.gutenberg.org/donate.
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states

where we have not met the solicitation requirements, we know
of no prohibition against accepting unsolicited donations from
donors in such states who approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot

make any statements concerning tax treatment of donations
received from outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp
our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current

donation methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a
number of other ways including checks, online payments and
credit card donations. To donate, please visit:
www.gutenberg.org/donate.
Section 5. General Information About Project

Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could
be freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose
network of volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several

printed editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by
copyright in the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus,
we do not necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any
particular paper edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,

including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new
eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear
about new eBooks.

The Tree of Legal Knowledge Imagining Blackstones Commentaries John V Orth Full Chapter PDF Scribd

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Tree of Legal Knowledge Imagining Blackstones Commentaries John V Orth Full Chapter PDF Scribd

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Tree of Legal Knowledge:

Imagining Blackstone's Commentaries

The Tree of Legal

The Tree of Legal Knowledge

ISBN 978-981-19-8695-6 ISBN 978-981-19-8696-3 (eBook)

Fort Washington, MA, USA Michael Widener

Notwithstanding large-scale deforestation for agriculture and human habitation,

reckoned by Blackstone “greatly superior” in method to all previous attempts, very

Adelaide, SA, Australia Wilfrid Prest

3 Blackstone, Analysis of the Laws of England, v, vi.

Chapel Hill, NC, USA John V. Orth

Appendix A: Blackstone’s Ghost: Law and Legal Education in North

Fig. 1.1 “Sir William Blackstone” by an unknown artist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Plate 4.1 Title Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

1.1 Imagining Blackstone

in New Haven, Connecticut in 1844.

Dubber & Christopher Tomlins, 2019).

paraphrasing a line in Matthew Prior’s poem “The Chameleon”).

(Johnson’s description of Sir John Hawkins, lawyer and author).

1.2 Imagining Blackstone’s Commentaries

20 3 Bl. Com. 268. See Prest, Blackstone 67 (“This elaborate architectural-cum-historical

law professor prepared “charts to accompany Blackstone’s Commentaries” for the

23 William C. Robinson, Common Law Charts to Accompany Blackstone’s Commentaries (1872).

1.3 “Published by Turner and Hughes”

32 Raleigh Register, 30 April 1838.

North Carolina Reports (1844); Taylor’s North Carolina Reports (1844).

1.4 Dedicated to William Gaston

1.5 Lithographed by J. H. Bufford

of Conference, composed of trial judges.

1.6 Imagining the Anonymous Author

Published by Turner & Hughes, dedicated to William Gaston, lithographed by J.H.

Pinckney C. Enniss had succeeded his father as publisher of Turner’s North

1.7 Ben Lavender

of land from the Margaret Alston Lavender Trust).

Ironically, even as he was carefully reproducing Blackstone’s catalog of the “abso-

Annual Report of the Commissioner of Patents (1868).

1.8 Blackstone’s Ghost

(citing Blackstone’s Commentaries for the common law background).

“The established reputation of Judge Blackstone’s commentaries has rendered it

With regard to certain minor considerations, different ideas of propriety existed

green and bears fruit throughout the winter.

Next in succession, is PRIVATE WRONGS. After expressing the means by which

government of Great Britain”.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or

• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who

• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES -

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the

Section 2. Information about the Mission of

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the

Section 3. Information about the Project