The Republic of Bees

Abstract

This chapter details changes in American law from the eighteenth century onward, covering federal and state constitutions, judges, organization of courts, and civil procedure, and the law of evidence. The colonies declared themselves independent in 1776. However, American law continued to borrow from English law. English doctrines that were needed and appropriate were welcome. Between 1776, and the middle of the nineteenth century, there developed a true republic of bees; their flowers were the social and economic institutions that grew up in the United States. American conditions and ideas were the lawmakers that made American law a distinctive system: a separate language within the common-law family.