The Province of Legislation Determined

A comprehensive account of English legal thought in the age of Blackstone and Bentham for nearly a century, The Province of Legislation Determined advances an ambitious reinterpretation of eighteenth-century attitudes to social change and law reform. Professor Lieberman’s bold synthesis rests on a wide survey of legal materials and on a detailed discussion of Blackstone’s Commentaries, the jurisprudence of Lord Kames and the Scottish Enlightenment, the chief justiceship of Lord Mansfield, the penal theories of Eden and Romilly, and the legislative science of Jeremy Bentham. The study relates legal developments to the broader fabric of eighteenth-century social and political theory, and offers a novel assessment of the character of the common law tradition and of Bentham’s contribution to the ideology of reform.

Preface; Abbreviations; Introduction; Part I. Blackstone and the Commentaries: 1. The law of England; 2. Blackstone’s science of legislation; Part II. The Judiciary: 3. Equity, principle and precedent; 4. Legal principles and law reform; 5. Mansfield and the commercial code; 6. Common law, principle and precedent; 7. Kames, legal history and law reform; 8. Kames and the principles of equity; Part III. Parliamentary Statute: 9. Statute consolidation; 10. Penal law reform; Part IV. Bentham: 11. The critique of common law; 12. The Digest; 13. From Blackstone to the Pannomion; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.