The Common Law Tradition
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power,’’ ‘‘due process,’’ and ‘‘levying war’’ were used in the same sense
in which Blackstone had employed them. In like manner, most of the
early State constitutions drafted in 1776 were influenced by the Commentaries, and these in turn were copied in part by the newer States joining
the Union. Thus the language of both the Federal and State constitutions in the United States cannot fully be understood without reference
to the English common law. And Blackstone’s classic, which is still being reprinted today, has generally been accepted as the best exposition
of that law.
Prominent American lawyers such as James Iredell of North Carolina,
who later served on the Supreme Court of the United States, and John
Dickinson of Pennsylvania (and later Delaware), who received his legal
training in England and was a delegate to the Federal Convention, were
also acquainted with the judicial opinions and legal writings of Blackstone’s predecessor—the great Sir Edward Coke (pronounced Cook). Before Blackstone’s Commentaries appeared, English and American lawyers
relied heavily upon Coke’s Reports and his four-volume Institutes of the
Laws of England to learn the principles of the common law; and even after
the Commentaries came into use, Coke’s writings were still thought necessary for a complete mastery of property law. What particularly interested American lawyers in the eighteenth century were Coke’s judicial
opinions of the early seventeenth century, which supported the supremacy of the law, and his opposition to the King’s interference in judicial
affairs in defense of the principle of an independent judiciary. Coke had
challenged the claims and pretensions of the Stuart kings and had helped
to prepare the way for the independence of both Parliament and the English courts. More than a century later, the Americans found Coke’s arguments useful in challenging the doctrines of legislative supremacy and
the claims of Parliament respecting control and domination of colonial
affairs. In Dr. Bonham’s Case (1610), for example, Coke asserted that the
common law controlled even acts of Parliament—a dictum that would
prove useful to James Otis of Massachusetts when he argued in the famous Writs of Assistance Case of 1761 that Parliament had no right to authorize British customs officials to issue general search warrants (without
naming any persons). ‘‘An Act against the Constitution is void,’’ declared
Otis. ‘‘An Act against natural equity is void. . . . [and the] Courts must