The Common Law in Colonial America

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199716714
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (997 download)

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Book Synopsis The Common Law in Colonial America by : William E. Nelson

Download or read book The Common Law in Colonial America written by William E. Nelson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-08-05 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on groundbreaking and overwhelmingly extensive research into local court records, The Common Law in Colonial America proposes a "new beginning" in the study of colonial legal history, as it charts the course of the common law in Early America, to reveal how the models of law that emerged differed drastically from that of the English common law. In this first volume, Nelson explores how the law of the Chesapeake colonies--Virginia and Maryland--differed from the New England colonies--Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, New Haven, Plymouth, and Rhode Island--and looks at the differences between the colonial legal systems within the two regions, from their initial settlement until approximately 1660.

The Common Law in Colonial America:Volume I: The Chesapeake and New England 1607-1660

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 9780195327281
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (272 download)

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Book Synopsis The Common Law in Colonial America:Volume I: The Chesapeake and New England 1607-1660 by : William E. Nelson

Download or read book The Common Law in Colonial America:Volume I: The Chesapeake and New England 1607-1660 written by William E. Nelson and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2008-08-05 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William E. Nelson here proposes a new beginning in the study of colonial legal history. Examining all archival legal material for the period 1607-1776 and synthesizing existing scholarship in a four-volume series, The Common Law in Colonial America shows how the legal systems of Britain's thirteen North American colonies--initially established in response to divergent political, economic, and religious initiatives--slowly converged into a common American legal order that differed substantially from English common law.Drawing on groundbreaking and overwhelmingly in-depth research into local court records and statutes, the first volume explores how the law of the Chesapeake colonies--Virginia and Maryland--diverged sharply from the New England colonies--Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, New Haven, Plymouth, and Rhode Island--and traces the roots of these dissimilarities from their initial settlement until approximately 1660. Nelson pointedly examines the disparate motives of the legal systems in the respective colonies as they dealt with religion, price and labor regulations, crimes, public morals, the status of women, and the enforcement of contractual obligations. He reveals how Virginians' zeal for profit led to a harsh legal framework that efficiently squeezed payment out of debtors and labor out of servants; whereas the laws of Massachusetts were primarily concerned with the preservation of local autonomy and the moral values of family-centered farming communities. The law in the other New England colonies, Nelson argues, gravitated towards the Massachusetts model, while Maryland's law, gravitated toward that of Virginia.Comprehensive, authoritative, and extensively researched, The Common Law in Colonial America, Volume 1: The Chesapeake and New England, 1607-1660 is the definitive resource on the beginnings of the common law and its evolution during this vibrant era in America's history. William E. Nelson here proposes a new beginning in the study of colonial legal history.

The Common Law in Colonial America

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190465050
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (94 download)

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Book Synopsis The Common Law in Colonial America by : William Edward Nelson

Download or read book The Common Law in Colonial America written by William Edward Nelson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume traces English efforts to govern the Chesapeake and New England colonies by imposing the common law. Although every colony received the common law by 1750, local interests retained significant power everywhere and used that power to preserve divergent, customary patterns of law that had arisen in the 17th century.

The Common Law in Colonial America:Volume I: The Chesapeake and New England 1607-1660

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 9780195327281
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (272 download)

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Book Synopsis The Common Law in Colonial America:Volume I: The Chesapeake and New England 1607-1660 by : William E. Nelson

Download or read book The Common Law in Colonial America:Volume I: The Chesapeake and New England 1607-1660 written by William E. Nelson and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2008-08-05 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William E. Nelson here proposes a new beginning in the study of colonial legal history. Examining all archival legal material for the period 1607-1776 and synthesizing existing scholarship in a four-volume series, The Common Law in Colonial America shows how the legal systems of Britain's thirteen North American colonies--initially established in response to divergent political, economic, and religious initiatives--slowly converged into a common American legal order that differed substantially from English common law.Drawing on groundbreaking and overwhelmingly in-depth research into local court records and statutes, the first volume explores how the law of the Chesapeake colonies--Virginia and Maryland--diverged sharply from the New England colonies--Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, New Haven, Plymouth, and Rhode Island--and traces the roots of these dissimilarities from their initial settlement until approximately 1660. Nelson pointedly examines the disparate motives of the legal systems in the respective colonies as they dealt with religion, price and labor regulations, crimes, public morals, the status of women, and the enforcement of contractual obligations. He reveals how Virginians' zeal for profit led to a harsh legal framework that efficiently squeezed payment out of debtors and labor out of servants; whereas the laws of Massachusetts were primarily concerned with the preservation of local autonomy and the moral values of family-centered farming communities. The law in the other New England colonies, Nelson argues, gravitated towards the Massachusetts model, while Maryland's law, gravitated toward that of Virginia.Comprehensive, authoritative, and extensively researched, The Common Law in Colonial America, Volume 1: The Chesapeake and New England, 1607-1660 is the definitive resource on the beginnings of the common law and its evolution during this vibrant era in America's history. William E. Nelson here proposes a new beginning in the study of colonial legal history.

The Common Law in Colonial America

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199937761
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (999 download)

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Book Synopsis The Common Law in Colonial America by : William E. Nelson

Download or read book The Common Law in Colonial America written by William E. Nelson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-12-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William E. Nelson's first volume of the four-volume The Common Law of Colonial America (2008) established a new benchmark for study of colonial era legal history. Drawing from both a rich archival base and existing scholarship on the topic, the first volume demonstrated how the legal systems of Britain's thirteen North American colonies-each of which had unique economies, political structures, and religious institutions -slowly converged into a common law order that differed substantially from English common law. The first volume focused on how the legal systems of the Chesapeake colonies--Virginia and Maryland--contrasted with those of the New England colonies and traced these dissimilarities from the initial settlement of America until approximately 1660. In this new volume, Nelson brings the discussion forward, covering the years from 1660, which saw the Restoration of the British monarchy, to 1730. In particular, he analyzes the impact that an increasingly powerful British government had on the evolution of the common law in the New World. As the reach of the Crown extended, Britain imposed far more restrictions than before on the new colonies it had chartered in the Carolinas and the middle Atlantic region. The government's intent was to ensure that colonies' laws would align more tightly with British law. Nelson examines how the newfound coherence in British colonial policy led these new colonies to develop common law systems that corresponded more closely with one another, eliminating much of the variation that socio-economic differences had created in the earliest colonies. As this volume reveals, these trends in governance ultimately resulted in a tension between top-down pressures from Britain for a more uniform system of laws and bottom-up pressures from colonists to develop their own common law norms and preserve their own distinctive societies. Authoritative and deeply researched, the volumes in The Common Law of Colonial America will become the foundational resource for anyone interested the history of American law before the Revolution.

The Common Law in Colonial America

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Author :
Publisher : OUP USA
ISBN 13 : 0199937753
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (999 download)

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Book Synopsis The Common Law in Colonial America by : William E. Nelson

Download or read book The Common Law in Colonial America written by William E. Nelson and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William E. Nelson's first volume of the four-volume The Common Law of Colonial America (2008) focused on how the legal systems of the Chesapeake colonies--Virginia and Maryland--contrasted with those of the New England colonies and traced these dissimilarities from the initial settlement of America until approximately 1660. In this new volume, Nelson brings the discussion forward, covering the years from 1660, which saw the Restoration of the British monarchy, to 1730. In particular, he analyzes the impact that an increasingly powerful British government had on the evolution of the common law in the New World. As the reach of the Crown extended, Britain imposed far more restrictions than before on the new colonies it had chartered in the Carolinas and the middle Atlantic region. The government's intent was to ensure that colonies' laws would align more tightly with British law. Nelson examines how the newfound coherence in British colonial policy led these new colonies to develop common law systems that corresponded more closely with one another, eliminating much of the variation that socio-economic differences had created in the earliest colonies. As this volume reveals, these trends in governance ultimately resulted in a tension between top-down pressures from Britain for a more uniform system of laws and bottom-up pressures from colonists to develop their own common law norms and preserve their own distinctive societies. Authoritative and deeply researched, the volumes in The Common Law of Colonial America will become the foundational resource for anyone interested the history of American law before the Revolution.

The Common Law in Colonial America

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190850485
Total Pages : 225 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (98 download)

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Book Synopsis The Common Law in Colonial America by : William Edward Nelson

Download or read book The Common Law in Colonial America written by William Edward Nelson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William E. Nelson here proposes a new beginning in the study of colonial legal history. Examining all archival legal material for the period 1607-1776 and synthesizing existing scholarship in a four-volume series, The Common Law in Colonial America shows how the legal systems of Britain's thirteen North American colonies--initially established in response to divergent political, economic, and religious initiatives--slowly converged into a common American legal order that differed substantially from English common law.

The Common Law in Colonial America

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 0199937753
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (999 download)

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Book Synopsis The Common Law in Colonial America by : William Edward Nelson

Download or read book The Common Law in Colonial America written by William Edward Nelson and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William E. Nelson's first volume of the four-volume The Common Law of Colonial America (2008) established a new benchmark for study of colonial era legal history. Drawing from both a rich archival base and existing scholarship on the topic, the first volume demonstrated how the legal systems of Britain's thirteen North American colonies-each of which had unique economies, political structures, and religious institutions -slowly converged into a common law order that differed substantially from English common law. The first volume focused on how the legal systems of the Chesapeake colonies--Virginia and Maryland--contrasted with those of the New England colonies and traced these dissimilarities from the initial settlement of America until approximately 1660. In this new volume, Nelson brings the discussion forward, covering the years from 1660, which saw the Restoration of the British monarchy, to 1730. In particular, he analyzes the impact that an increasingly powerful British government had on the evolution of the common law in the New World. As the reach of the Crown extended, Britain imposed far more restrictions than before on the new colonies it had chartered in the Carolinas and the middle Atlantic region. The government's intent was to ensure that colonies' laws would align more tightly with British law. Nelson examines how the newfound coherence in British colonial policy led these new colonies to develop common law systems that corresponded more closely with one another, eliminating much of the variation that socio-economic differences had created in the earliest colonies. As this volume reveals, these trends in governance ultimately resulted in a tension between top-down pressures from Britain for a more uniform system of laws and bottom-up pressures from colonists to develop their own common law norms and preserve their own distinctive societies. Authoritative and deeply researched, the volumes in The Common Law of Colonial America will become the foundational resource for anyone interested the history of American law before the Revolution.

English Common Law in the Early American Colonies

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 84 pages
Book Rating : 4.A/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis English Common Law in the Early American Colonies by : Paul Samuel Reinsch

Download or read book English Common Law in the Early American Colonies written by Paul Samuel Reinsch and published by . This book was released on 1899 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Common Law in Colonial America

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199886857
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (998 download)

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Book Synopsis The Common Law in Colonial America by : William E. Nelson

Download or read book The Common Law in Colonial America written by William E. Nelson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-08-05 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on groundbreaking and overwhelmingly extensive research into local court records, The Common Law in Colonial America proposes a "new beginning" in the study of colonial legal history, as it charts the course of the common law in Early America, to reveal how the models of law that emerged differed drastically from that of the English common law. In this first volume, Nelson explores how the law of the Chesapeake colonies--Virginia and Maryland--differed from the New England colonies--Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, New Haven, Plymouth, and Rhode Island--and looks at the differences between the colonial legal systems within the two regions, from their initial settlement until approximately 1660.

English Common Law in the Early American Colonies

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 80 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (243 download)

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Book Synopsis English Common Law in the Early American Colonies by : Paul Samuel Reinsch

Download or read book English Common Law in the Early American Colonies written by Paul Samuel Reinsch and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

E Pluribus Unum

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Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0190880805
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (98 download)

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Book Synopsis E Pluribus Unum by : William E. Nelson

Download or read book E Pluribus Unum written by William E. Nelson and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The colonies that comprised pre-revolutionary America had thirteen legal systems and governments. Given their diversity, how did they evolve into a single nation? In E Pluribus Unum, the eminent legal historian William E. Nelson explains how this diverse array of legal orders gradually converged over time, laying the groundwork for the founding of the United States. From their inception, the colonies exercised a range of approaches to the law. For instance, while New England based its legal system around the word of God, Maryland followed the common law tradition, and New York adhered to Dutch law. Over time, though, the British crown standardized legal procedure in an effort to more uniformly and efficiently exert control over the Empire. But, while the common law emerged as the dominant system across the colonies, its effects were far from what English rulers had envisioned. E Pluribus Unum highlights the political context in which the common law developed and how it influenced the United States Constitution. In practice, the triumph of the common law over competing approaches gave lawyers more authority than governing officials. By the end of the eighteenth century, many colonial legal professionals began to espouse constitutional ideology that would mature into the doctrine of judicial review. In turn, laypeople came to accept constitutional doctrine by the time of independence in 1776. Ultimately, Nelson shows that the colonies' gradual embrace of the common law was instrumental to the establishment of the United States. Not simply a masterful legal history of colonial America, Nelson's magnum opus fundamentally reshapes our understanding of the sources of both the American Revolution and the Founding.

Criminal Justice in Colonial America, 1606-1660

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Author :
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 0820336912
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (23 download)

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Book Synopsis Criminal Justice in Colonial America, 1606-1660 by : Bradley Chapin

Download or read book Criminal Justice in Colonial America, 1606-1660 written by Bradley Chapin and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study analyzes the development of criminal law during the first several generations of American life. Its comparison of the substantive and procedural law among the colonies reveals the similarities and differences between the New England and the Chesapeake colonies. Bradley Chapin addresses the often-debated question of the “reception” of English law and makes estimates of the relative weight of the sources and methods of early American law. A main theme of his book is that colonial legislators and judges achieved a significant reform of the English criminal law at a time when a parallel movement in England failed. The analysis is made specific and concrete by statistics that show patterns of prosecutions and crime rates. In addition to the exciting and convincing theme of a “lost period” of great creativity in American criminal law, Chapin gives a wealth of detail on statutory and common-law rulings, noteworthy criminal cases, and judicial views of how the law was to be administered. He provides social and economic explanations of shifts and peculiarities in the law, using carefully arranged evidence from the records. His treatment of the Quaker cases in Massachusetts and the witchcraft prosecutions in New England throws new light on those frequently misunderstood episodes. Chapin's book will be of interest not only to scholars working in the field but also to anyone curious about early American legal history.

Law and Religion in Colonial America

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Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1009289071
Total Pages : 363 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (92 download)

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Book Synopsis Law and Religion in Colonial America by : Scott Douglas Gerber

Download or read book Law and Religion in Colonial America written by Scott Douglas Gerber and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-07-31 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Law – charters, statutes, judicial decisions, and traditions – mattered in colonial America, and laws about religion mattered a lot. The legal history of colonial America reveals that America has been devoted to the free exercise of religion since well before the First Amendment was ratified. Indeed, the two colonies originally most opposed to religious liberty for anyone who did not share their views, Connecticut and Massachusetts, eventually became bastions of it. By focusing on law, Scott Douglas Gerber offers new insights about each of the five English American colonies founded for religious reasons – Maryland, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Massachusetts – and challenges the conventional view that colonial America had a unified religious history.

Agents of Empire

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1009316893
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (93 download)

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Book Synopsis Agents of Empire by : Sean Gailmard

Download or read book Agents of Empire written by Sean Gailmard and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-03-31 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains how American political institutions evolved from strategic interaction of the English crown, colonial agents, and colonists.

Law and Sexual Misconduct in New England, 1650-1750

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317107802
Total Pages : 200 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (171 download)

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Book Synopsis Law and Sexual Misconduct in New England, 1650-1750 by : Abby Chandler

Download or read book Law and Sexual Misconduct in New England, 1650-1750 written by Abby Chandler and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Having arriving in the Province of Maine in 1641 with a brief to create both government and law for the fledgling colony, Thomas Gorges later recorded his policy as having ’steared as neere as we could to the course of Ingland’. Over the course of the next century the various colonial administrations all consciously measured their laws against that of England, whether their intention was imitation of or conscious opposition to, established English legal system. In order to trace the shifting and contested relationships between colonial laws and English laws, this book focuses on the prosecution of sexual misconduct. All crimes can threaten orderly society but no other crime posed quite the same long term implications as illicit sex resulting in the birth of illegitimate children who became their own social challenges. Sexual misconduct was, consequently, a major concern for early modern leaders, making it a particularly fruitful subject for studying the complex relationship between laws in England and laws in the English colonies. Political and ecclesiastical leaders create laws to coerce people to behave in a certain fashion and to convey wider messages about the societies they govern. When those same laws are broken, lawbreakers must be tried and punished by a means intended to serve as a warning to other would-be lawbreakers. In this book the two-part analysis of changing sexual misconduct laws and the resulting trial depositions highlights the ways in which ordinary New England colonists across New England both interacted with and responded to the growing Anglicization of their legal systems and makes the argument that these men and women saw themselves as taking part in a much larger process.

New Horizons in Spanish Colonial Law

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Author :
Publisher : Max Planck Institute for European Legal History
ISBN 13 : 3944773020
Total Pages : 268 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (447 download)

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Book Synopsis New Horizons in Spanish Colonial Law by : Thomas Duve

Download or read book New Horizons in Spanish Colonial Law written by Thomas Duve and published by Max Planck Institute for European Legal History. This book was released on 2015-12-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: http://dx.doi.org/10.12946/gplh3 http://www.epubli.de/shop/buch/48746 "Spanish colonial law, derecho indiano, has since the early 20th century been a vigorous subdiscipline of legal history. One of great figures in the field, the Argentinian legal historian Víctor Tau Anzoátegui, published in 1997 his Nuevos horizontes en el estudio histórico del derecho indiano. The book, in which Tau addressed seminal methodological questions setting tone for the discipline’s future orientation, proved to be the starting point for an important renewal of the discipline. Tau drew on the writings of legal historians, such as Paolo Grossi, Antonio Manuel Hespanha, and Bartolomé Clavero. Tau emphasized the development of legal history in connection to what he called “the posture superseding rational and statutory state law.” The following features of normativity were now in need of increasing scholarly attention: the autonomy of different levels of social organization, the different modes of normative creativity, the many different notions of law and justice, the position of the jurist as an artifact of law, and the casuistic character of the legal decisions. Moreover, Tau highlighted certain areas of Spanish colonial law that he thought deserved more attention than they had hitherto received. One of these was the history of the learned jurist: the letrado was to be seen in his social, political, economic, and bureaucratic context. The Argentinian legal historian called for more scholarly works on book history, and he thought that provincial and local histories of Spanish colonial law had been studied too little. Within the field of historical science as a whole, these ideas may not have been revolutionary, but they contributed in an important way to bringing the study of Spanish colonial law up-to-date. It is beyond doubt that Tau’s programmatic visions have been largely fulfilled in the past two decades. Equally manifest is, however, that new challenges to legal history and Spanish colonial law have emerged. The challenges of globalization are felt both in the historical and legal sciences, and not the least in the field of legal history. They have also brought major topics (back) on to the scene, such as the importance of religious normativity within the normative setting of societies. These challenges have made scholars aware of the necessity to reconstruct the circulation of ideas, juridical practices, and researchers are becoming more attentive to the intense cultural translation involved in the movement of legal ideas and institutions from one context to another. Not least, the growing consciousness and strong claims to reconsider colonial history from the premises of postcolonial scholarship expose the discipline to an unseen necessity of reconsidering its very foundational concepts. What concept of law do we need for our historical studies when considering multi-normative settings? How do we define the spatial dimension of our work? How do we analyze the entanglements in legal history? Until recently, Spanish colonial law attracted little interest from non-Hispanic scholars, and its results were not seen within a larger global context. In this respect, Spanish colonial law was hardly different from research done on legal history of the European continent or common law. Spanish colonial law has, however, recently become a topic of interest beyond the Hispanic world. The field is now increasingly seen in the context of “global legal history,” while the old and the new research results are often put into a comparative context of both European law of the early Modern Period and other colonial legal orders. In this volume, scholars from different parts of the Western world approach Spanish colonial law from the new perspectives of contemporary legal historical research."