Commentaries on the Laws of England

1. The Law of Torts Sir Frederick Pollock 7 authority · 3 neutral · 2 refuted 12 citations · 41 passages

   ch. 3 · ch. 8 · chapter x.: nuisance. · ch. 50 · ch. 56 2 passages anchored here · ch. 60 · ch. 113 34 passages anchored here

   Cited by volume and page multiple times as authority on the historical forms of action.

   For the advantages of suing in case over the older forms of actions, see Blackstone, iii.

2. An Essay on the Trial by Jury Lysander Spooner 6 authority · 1 neutral 7 citations · 30 passages

   ch. 7 · ch. 8 3 passages anchored here · ch. 9 8 passages anchored here · ch. 20 3 passages anchored here · ch. 23 15 passages anchored here

   Blackstone's Commentaries is quoted repeatedly as the leading authority on English court structure and the courts of conscience.

   the object being, as Blackstone says, “to bring justice home to every man’s door.

3. Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England A. V. Dicey 5 authority · 1 neutral 6 citations · 20 passages

   ch. 15 3 passages anchored here · ch. 36 2 passages anchored here · ch. 41 2 passages anchored here · ch. 51 13 passages anchored here

   Dicey treats Blackstone's Commentaries as the authoritative textual embodiment of the era's optimistic constitutionalism, quoting it at length as evidence of the age's spirit.

   It hath been the endeavour of these commentaries, however the execution may have succeeded, to examine its solid foundations, to mark out its extensive plan, to explain the use and distribution of its parts, and from the harmonious concurrence of those several parts, to demonstrate the elegant proportion of the whole.

4. Institutes of Roman Law Gaius 3 neutral · 1 extended 4 citations

   de statv liberorvm. (2) · commentarivs qvartvs 3 passages anchored here

   Directly quoted as comparative authority for symbolic conveyance.

   The use of the rod or wand as representative of the spear, the symbol of dominion, may be paralleled in English law by the delivery of a staff as the symbol of power and possession in the conveyance of copyholds.

5. Ancient Law Henry Sumner Maine 1 neutral · 3 refuted 4 citations · 9 passages

   introduction. 2 passages anchored here · ch. 9 2 passages anchored here · ch. 12 5 passages anchored here

   Blackstone's work is explicitly cited and critically assessed in two separate passages.

   but Blackstone had ceased to be generally read with attention even by lawyers, and was not a safe guide for any period before the thirteenth century.

6. Lectures on the Early History of Institutions Henry Sumner Maine 1 authority · 1 neutral 2 citations

   ch. 11 · ch. 14

   Blackstone is invoked as an authoritative legal commentator on the hazards of English distress law.

   Nay, those very subtleties of old English law which, as Blackstone says, made the taking of distress ‘a hazardous sort of proceeding’ to the civil distrainor, might bring an Irishman to the gallows, if in conscientiously attempting to carry out the foreign law he fell into the smallest mistake.

7. The Unconstitutionality of Slavery Lysander Spooner 2 authority 2 citations · 11 passages

   secondly. · ch. 14 10 passages anchored here

   Blackstone's work is invoked through his editor's commentary as supporting authority.

   Christian, one of Blackstone’s editors, says that it is this writ that makes slavery impossible in England.

8. The Genius of the Common Law Sir Frederick Pollock 1 authority · 1 extended 2 citations · 3 passages

   iii.: surrebutter castle · v.: rescue and ransom 2 passages anchored here

   Pollock reports and builds upon Blackstone's account of the eighteenth-century licensing of the general issue to develop his own argument about the piecemeal history of pleading reform.

   But the science of special pleading having been frequently perverted to the purposes of chicane and delay, the courts have, of late, in some instances, and the legislature in many more, permitted the general issue to be pleaded, which leaves everything open, the fact, the law, and the equity of the case.

9. Magna Carta: A Commentary on the Great Charter of King John William Sharp McKechnie 2 authority 2 citations · 6 passages

   ch. 11 3 passages anchored here · ch. 229 3 passages anchored here

   Blackstone's Commentaries are directly quoted and repeatedly invoked as the standard modern authority on English tenure and incidents.

   (e) Primer Seisin, which is usually regarded as a separate incident, and figures as such in Blackstone’s list, is perhaps better understood, not as an incident at all, but as a special procedure—effective and summary—whereby the Crown could enforce the four incidents already described.

10. Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated John Taylor of Caroline 1 extended 1 citation

    section 6.: property.

    Blackstone's classification of rights is named directly and then built upon to develop the passage's own account of life, liberty, and property.

    Blackstone has treated of “The rights of persons, and the rights of things;

11. The Law of Intellectual Property Lysander Spooner 1 authority 1 citation

    ch. 32

    Directly cited by author name and page as a legal authority.

    Blackstone 301 and 321.

12. Law in a Free State Wordsworth Donisthorpe 1 authority 1 citation · 2 passages

    ch. 9 2 passages anchored here

    Blackstone is named and quoted directly as the authoritative source on English family and inheritance law.

    In the quaint and childlike words of Blackstone, Susan “finds a thousand obstacles in her way-shame, remorse, the constraint of her sex, and the rigor of laws—that stifle her inclinations to perform this duty;

The harvest records where a citation is made: the paragraph in the citing book, and the chapter that paragraph stands in. It does not record which page of this text is meant. Where the citing text names a locus, you will find it in the quotation.