[Untitled]

Abstract

The colonial period is, for most lawyers and laymen, the dark ages of American law. When an American lawyer faces a legal problem, she normally considers two sources of legal authority—statutes and published cases. The typical American lawyer has probably never seen, dealt with, or even heard of any cases or statutes from the colonial period. There is a good reason why. Until well after independence, there were no handy and accessible collections of colonial cases and statutes. Even now, only scattered collections of colonial cases have ever been published. Many colonial statutes survive only in ancient or rare editions. ...