{"product_id":"the-ancient-constitution-and-the-origins-of-anglo-american-liberty-hardcover","title":"The Ancient Constitution: And the Origins of Anglo-American Liberty - Hardcover","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eJohn Phillip Reid\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, English and American lawyers appealed to \"the ancient constitution\" as the cornerstone of liberty. According to this idea, constitutional law was not dictated by a monarch but based on the authority of custom, passed down unaltered from time immemorial. Legal historian John Phillip Reid convincingly demonstrates that this concept of an unchanging, ancient constitution furnished English common lawyers and parliamentarians an argument with which to combat royal prerogative power. At the same time, it provided American revolutionaries with legal arguments for rejecting the British parliament's effort to impose arbitrary rule upon the colonies.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhereas modern historians have tended to fault the constitutionalists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for inventing a mystical past, these polemical pamphleteers had less interest in the accuracy of their history than in its usefulness in forensic argumentation. Much as lawyers contending before the bar, they appealed to the past as precedent, as analogy, as principle--in short, as forensic history. Claiming that liberty had been more effective and secure during ancient times, they upheld an idealized Anglo-Saxon standard for testing contemporary institutions. More significantly, they called upon the authority of the ancient constitution as a defense against the innovations of the English monarchy and against the assertions of an unrepresentative parliament.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Ancient Constitution and the Origins of Anglo-American Liberty\u003c\/i\u003e complements Reid's recent book on another cornerstone of Anglo-American jurisprudence and constitutional theory, \u003ci\u003eRule of Law\u003c\/i\u003e. Whereas \"rule of law\" insists that one law applies to rulers and ruled alike, the ancient constitution embodied the ideal for what that one law should be.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJohn Phillip Reid is Professor of Law Emeritus at New York University. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he served as a law clerk for the U.S. District Court for New Hampshire and is the author of numerous books on legal history.\u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 196\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.7 x 9.3 x 6.66 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e June 21, 2005\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47644051767555,"sku":"9780875803425","price":1856.41,"currency_code":"MXN","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0588\/9310\/7359\/files\/Vzl6M3ZuN0tBVVFadlFKWStMUlloUT09.webp?v=1768729933","url":"https:\/\/annizon.com\/en-mx\/products\/the-ancient-constitution-and-the-origins-of-anglo-american-liberty-hardcover","provider":"annizon.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}