Legacy of Sir William Blackstone

Blackstone was a good judge but a better commentator. The Commentaries is a systematic, clear, and elegant description of the state of English law in the middle of the 18th century. It had an immediate and outstanding success. In England and America the Commentaries became the basis of university legal education.

Blackstone was by no means a scientific jurist. He had only the vaguest grasp of the elementary conceptions of law. He evidently regarded the law of England as the rules of action or conduct imposed by a superior power on its subjects. He propounded the doctrine that municipal laws derive their validity from their conformity to the so-called law of nature, or law of God. “No human laws,” he said, “are of any validity if contrary to this.” His fundamental distinction between the rights of persons and the rights of things, implying as it did that things as well as persons have rights, is attributable to a misunderstanding of the technical terms of Roman law. In distinguishing between private and public wrongs (civil injuries and crimes) he failed to understand the true principle of the division. By his tendency to substitute loose literary phrases for precise and closely defined terms, he occasionally fell into irreconcilable contradictions. Even in discussing a subject of such immense importance as equity, he hardly discriminated between the legal and popular senses of the word, and from the small place that equity jurisprudence occupies in his arrangement, he would scarcely seem to have realized its true position in the law of England. Despite these flaws, however, the completeness of the treatise, its serviceable if not scientific order, and its powerful and lucid exposition demand recognition. Blackstone’s defects as a jurist are more conspicuous in his treatment of the underlying principles and fundamental divisions of the law than in his account of its substantive principles.

Blackstone did not confine himself to the work of a legal commentator. It was his business, especially when he touched on the framework of society, to find a basis in history and reason for all the most characteristic English institutions. There is not much either of philosophy or fairness in this part of his work, and Blackstone generally shows himself to be a specious defender of the existing political and social order.

Contemporary criticism of the Commentaries was directed not against the book as a whole but against particular points. Blackstone’s view that dissent, in law, was a crime was particularly criticized. The most damaging criticism came near the end of Blackstone’s life and had its greatest effect after his death. The philosopher Jeremy Bentham attacked him as an “enemy of reformation”—a charge that is not surprising considering that Bentham was a radical legal reformer and Blackstone a historical expositor of the law. But Blackstone was not necessarily a defender either of the status quo or of vested interests. He certainly believed that the constitution was “wisely contrived,” but he was aware that it had faults. Indeed, some passages in the Commentaries could well have been quoted in favour of parliamentary reform; for example, he stated that there might be “a more complete representation of the people,” a remark that expressed disapproval of rotten boroughs.

But it would be absurd to expect the Commentaries to be primarily a plea for reform. Its purpose, like that of the lectures it is based on, is to explain and describe. Blackstone’s description of the law as it existed was accurate and comprehensive and was of great use to those who wished to reform it. His description of the constitution was much more in keeping with the facts than some of his critics allowed, and his statement of the sovereignty of Parliament and his recognition of the implications of sovereignty were significant achievements.

Having said this, it is still undeniable that the Commentaries’ merit as a work of literature easily outweighs its value as a treatise on government. It is written in an allusive and elegant style, and its language is simple and clear. Whether because of its literary qualities or its flattery of public prejudices, the influence of the book in England was extraordinary. It was accepted as an authoritative revelation of the law, and it performed for the educated classes in England much the same service as was rendered to the people of Rome by the publication of their previously unknown laws. To this day Blackstone’s criticism of the English constitution probably expresses the most profound political convictions of the majority of the English people.

The fame of Blackstone in the 19th century was greater in the United States than in Blackstone’s native land. After the American Revolutionary War the Commentaries was the chief source of the knowledge of English law in the American republic. A work that was a textbook in the old country became in the new one an oracle of law. The results of this transposition were not always good, but, fortunately, living law in America was being shaped through local institutions, and the country’s legislators and judges were practical men in spite of the Commentaries. By the late 19th century American legal scholars had begun to escape from Blackstone’s influence, and by the mid-20th century few Americans had read Blackstone even as a classic. Nevertheless, Blackstone is a symbol that American lawyers remember.