William Blackstone

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Portrait of Blackstones by Thomas Gainsborough , 1774

Sir William Blackstone [wiljəm 'blækstən] (* 10. July 1723 in City of London , London ; † 14. February 1780 in Wallingford , Berkshire , today Oxfordshire ) was an English lawyer , judge , professor and Member of Parliament . He is best known for its historical analytical treatise on the common law , the Commentaries on the Laws of England ( Engl about.: Comments on the Law of England) announced that for the first time in the years 1765 to 1769 by the University Press Oxford University Press issued .

Life

Blackstone was born in Cheapside, a famous street in London, the fourth son of a cloth merchant who had died months before he was born. When Blackstone's mother died, he was orphaned at the age of twelve and from then on lived with his uncle Thomas Bigg. Despite all this, Blackstone achieved an excellent education, he first attended the Charterhouse elite school between 1730 and 1738 and then studied at Pembroke College in Oxford .

In 1741 he was elected a student at Middle Temple , one of the four bar associations, the Inns of Court , and two years later Blackstone was elected a member of All Souls College , Oxford. In 1746 he finally became a barrister . Blackstone did not have a successful time at All Souls College, but was always considered to be an able, efficient, and zealous person. In 1750 he published An Essay on Collateral Consanguinity .

Blackstone had worked as a judge since 1751, developing a keen interest in common law . From 1753 he gave lectures on what were the first in the world to be held on this subject at universities. His An Analysis of the Laws of England , published in 1756 , formed the basis on which he later wrote his famous Commentaries on the Laws of England . When Charles Viner founded the Vinerian Professorship of English Law in 1758, which still exists today , Blackstone became first chairman in the same year until he was replaced by Robert Chambers in 1766.

In March 1761, Blackstone became a Member of the House of Commons for the rotten borough Hindon in Wiltshire , of which he was a member for nine years until 1770. In May of the same year he married Sarah Clitherow and purchased Castle Priory in Wallingford, where he lived . Ten years before his death, he was beaten Knight Bachelor ("Sir").

In the late 1770s, Blackstone's health deteriorated and he finally died in Wallingford in 1780, where he was buried in St. Peter's Church.

Commentaries on the Laws of England

Sir William Blackstone in 1920 by Paul Wayland Bartlett in Washington, DC created

Origin and intention

The Commentaries on the Laws of England was intended to provide an overview of the then applicable law of England. The actual publication of the Commentaries was preceded by a large number of other works. In fact, the commentaries are a summary of lectures Blackstone gave when he was a professor. In 1754 a first abstract, the Analysis of the Laws of England, was published, which was to serve as a guide for his students.

The sense of the Commentaries on the Laws of England was to give a summary of all applicable laws of England, which the first attempt since Henry de Bracton writings De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae was from the 13th century.

Today Blackstone's Commentaries are mainly considered important for legal historians, but in the Anglo-Saxon world they are still discussed in law schools in the basic education, since the Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence is based on common law , for which he established one of the foundations. At that time they formed the basis of legal training at universities.

content

By and large, the Commentaries are a summary of judicial orders that were considered model cases , on which Blackstone also wrote descriptions and descriptions. His work includes cases on property law , personal rights , tort law and criminal law .

literature

  • Wilfrid R. Perst: William Blackstone: Law and Letters in the Eighteenth Century . Oxford University Press, 2008
  • Blackstone, Sir William . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 4 : Bishārīn - Calgary . London 1910, p. 25 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).
  • Ann Jordan Laeuchli: A bibliographic catalog of William Blackstone . Published for Yale Law Library by William S. Hein & Co., Oxford 2015, ISBN 978-0-8377-3993-9 .
  • Hans-Christof Kraus : Montesquieu, Blackstone, De Lolme and the English constitution of the 18th century . In: Jahrbuch des Historischen Kollegs , 1995, pp. 113–153; Digitized version (PDF).

Web links

Commons : William Blackstone  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ berkshirehistory.com Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780)
  2. ↑ blackstoneinstitute.org ( Memento July 5, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Sir William Blackstone
  3. ^ A b c Sir William Blackstone: early life britannica.com
  4. ^ A b Wolfgang Fikentscher: Methods of Law II books.google.de
personal data
SURNAME Blackstone, William
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Blackstone, Sir William (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English lawyer and politician, member of the House of Commons
DATE OF BIRTH July 10, 1723
PLACE OF BIRTH City of London , London
DATE OF DEATH February 14, 1780
Place of death Wallingford (Oxfordshire) , England