St. George Tucker - Tucker's Blackstone

Tucker's Blackstone

When he was Professor of Law and Police at the College of William & Mary, Tucker used William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England as his primary text. While Tucker considered Blackstone the best treatise to use for learning the common law, he thought it had some important weaknesses as a teaching tool for American law. None of the editions of Blackstone published in the United States actually discussed new legal developments there; they just reprinted Blackstone's discussions of English law. Tucker also felt that Blackstone's sympathy with the power of the Crown over that of Parliament would be a poor influence for a student of American legal principles. Therefore, Tucker wrote marginalia in his copy of Blackstone and read them to his classes, and added lectures on Virginian and United States federal law and comparing the American political system with its British counterpart.

In 1795, at the urging of several friends, including former Virginia governor John Page, Tucker began investigating the possibility of publishing his written works, including an edition of Blackstone with his notes and with his lectures from William & Mary added as appendixes. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts to find a printer, Tucker reached an agreement with the Philadelphia firm of Birch and Small, which paid Tucker $4000 for the book's copyright. "Tucker's Blackstone" was organized into five volumes. Each volume would begin with Blackstone's original text, with notes from Tucker added, followed by an appendix containing Tucker's lectures and writings on particular subjects. Blackstone's text was mostly arranged the same way as in the original version, but Tucker organized the appendixes to show what he felt the most important developments in American law were.

Tucker's Blackstone sold well from the beginning, and it quickly became the major treatise on American law in the early 19th century. Law reporter Daniel Call described it as "necessary to every student and practitioner of law in Virginia". Lawyers arguing before the Supreme Court of the United States would frequently cite to Tucker's Blackstone - more often than any other commentator until 1827. The U.S. Supreme Court itself cited Tucker's Blackstone frequently, referring to it in over forty cases, many of them significant. Modern lawyers, legal scholars, and judges still refer to this work as an important tool for determining how Americans understood both English and American law in the early days after the United States's independence.