Published by Primary Source Microfilm

The unrivalled legal classic of 19th-century England, Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England was both a literary masterpiece and a premier effort to reduce English common law to a coherent, unified and rational system. The great law book, published in four volumes between 1765 and 1769, was based on a course of lectures Blackstone gave at Oxford University.

William Blackstone is generally credited with laying the foundations of modern English law and profoundly influencing the legal systems of the United States and other countries.

Thirty-five volumes of a student's detailed manuscript notebooks recording Blackstone's original lectures are made available in this collection. The original series of lectures follows the same sequence as Blackstone's Commentaries, covering such subjects as:

• The foundation of the laws of England
• The Royal Prerogative
• Crown revenues
• Parliament
• The judicial structure
• Crimes against property
• Prevention or punishment
• Methods of prosecution
• The criminal process
• Blackstone's own historical observations upon the development of the law from the Norman conquest to the mid-18th century

5 reels