Commentaries on American Law, 10th Edition, 4 Volumes.
Final Antebellum Edition of Kent's Commentaries Kent, James [1763-1847]. [McCurdy, Richard A., Editor]. [Forman, William Henry, Editor]. Commentaries on American Law. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1860. Four volumes. Octavo (9-1/4" x 6"). Original tan buckram, black-stamped fillets with red and black lettering pieces to spines. Light soiling, moderate rubbing to extremities, small chips to upper lettering piece of Volume I and front board of Volume IV. Moderate toning to interiors, early marks to margins of a few leaves in each volume, crack to text block of Volume I between pp. 216 and 217, pp. 243-250 partially detached and lightly edgeworn. Overall, a good, well-preserved set. $950. * Tenth edition, star-paged to the second edition (1832). Kent's Commentaries is probably the single most important interpretation of American law. Writing in 1847, Marvin ranked it above Blackstone and observes that it contains "not only a clear statement of the English law, with all the alterations that have taken place since the time of Blackstone, but a full account of the main principles of Equity, also, a review of the modifications engrafted on the English law by the different states of the Union." Marvin's latter observation points to the significance of this landmark work. Published at a time when there was considerable opposition to English law, Kent's Commentaries established it in a manner that appealed to the majority of influential American jurists and legislators. As Roper notes, by transplanting English common law, the Commentaries "had the two-prong effect of helping to maintain the primacy of judge-made law in contrast to codification by legislatures, while providing the legal profession with the degree and kind of certainty it craved." Originally published from 1826 to 1830, the tenth was the last edition published before the Civil War. The eleventh edition appeared in 1867. Marvin, Legal Bibliography 438. Roper, "James Kent" in American National Biography 12:598-199. Cohen, Bibliography of Early American Law 5407.
Price: $950.00
Book number 82782