William Blackstone was an eighteenth-century English jurist best known for writing the Commentaries on the Laws of England, a four-volume survey published between 1765 and 1769 that organized centuries of scattered rulings and customs into the first readable guide to English common law.1William & Mary Law School. 1765: Commentaries on the Laws of England by William Blackstone He was also the first person to teach English common law at an English university, a Member of Parliament, a justice on two of the country’s highest courts, and a quiet contributor to early prison reform. His writing shaped the legal foundations of the United States and remains in citation more than 250 years later.
He Taught English Common Law at Oxford for the First Time
In 1753, as a fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, Blackstone began delivering private lectures on English common law. English universities at the time taught Roman civil law and canon law. Anyone who wanted to learn the actual law of the land trained through apprenticeship at the Inns of Court in London. Blackstone’s lectures were the first formal university instruction in English common law.2All Souls College, University of Oxford. Law
In 1758 he became the first Vinerian Professor of Common Law at Oxford, a newly created chair that gave the project institutional backing.3Lillian Goldman Law Library. New Acquisition – American Student’s Notes on William Blackstone’s Lectures The lectures were aimed at future landowners, clergy, and parliamentarians who would deal with the legal system in public life, and they demonstrated that English law could be studied as an intellectual discipline rather than picked up through practice. They proved popular, and they laid the groundwork for the book that followed.
He Wrote the Commentaries on the Laws of England
Blackstone turned the lectures into the Commentaries, published in four volumes between 1765 and 1769. The work gave a sprawling and often contradictory body of law a clear architecture, with each volume covering a distinct branch and the whole aimed at a general educated audience rather than practicing lawyers alone.
The first volume, The Rights of Persons, examined individual legal status. Blackstone opened by identifying three “absolute rights” belonging to every person: personal security, personal liberty, and private property. He described these as rights people would hold even outside organized society and argued that the principal purpose of law was to protect them.4Avalon Project. Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England – Book the First – Chapter the First: Of the Absolute Rights of Individuals The volume moved through the legal relationships of everyday life — master and servant, husband and wife, parent and child — and laid out the structure of government, including the monarchy, Parliament, and the church.5Avalon Project. Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England
The second volume, The Rights of Things, tackled property law. Eighteenth-century English property rules were staggeringly complex, built on feudal land tenure and layered rules of transfer and inheritance. Blackstone worked through those categories and defined property rights as the power to freely use, enjoy, and dispose of one’s possessions without interference except by law.4Avalon Project. Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England – Book the First – Chapter the First: Of the Absolute Rights of Individuals For anyone trying to understand medieval property rules still governing English land, this was the first readable guide.
The third volume, Private Wrongs, covered civil injuries and court remedies. Blackstone described how one person could legally wrong another through trespass, nuisance, or defamation, explained how to bring a lawsuit, and mapped the jurisdictions of courts such as Chancery and Common Pleas.5Avalon Project. Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England
The fourth volume, Public Wrongs, addressed criminal law. Blackstone categorized offenses from high treason down to minor misdemeanors, described the elements of each crime, and set out the corresponding punishments. He insisted on strict procedural protections for defendants, writing that “great strictness” had to be observed at every stage because life and liberty were at stake. He praised the English system for fixing punishments in advance by law and argued that a defendant was entitled to an “unvaried rule” rather than the “private opinions of the judge.”6Avalon Project. Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book the Fourth, Chapter the Twenty-Ninth
He Articulated Legal Principles That Still Carry His Name
Beyond organizing existing law, Blackstone produced clear formulations of ideas that became cornerstones of Anglo-American legal thinking.
On freedom of the press, he drew a sharp line between censorship before publication and punishment afterward. Press freedom, he wrote, meant “laying no previous restraints upon publications, and not in freedom from censure for criminal matter when published.” A person had the right to put any idea before the public, but the writer bore responsibility if the published material was illegal or harmful. That distinction between prior restraint and post-publication accountability became foundational to free speech law.
On the home, Blackstone articulated the principle that “every man’s house is looked upon by the law to be his castle of defence and asylum, wherein he should suffer no violence.” The protection ran so deep, he explained, that ordinary legal processes like a summons or arrest could not be executed inside a person’s home without special justification; an officer needed to physically encounter the defendant before gaining authority to force entry, and otherwise had to wait outside.7The Founders’ Constitution. William Blackstone, Commentaries
And on burdens of proof, he produced his most quoted sentence: “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.” The maxim, drawn from his treatment of criminal procedure, became known as the Blackstone ratio and remains widely cited in judicial opinions and legal scholarship.
He Shaped the Legal Thinking of the American Founders
The Commentaries arrived in the American colonies as tensions with Britain were escalating, and the work gave colonial lawyers a systematic framework for thinking about rights, government power, and the limits of authority. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Marshall all owned copies and cited them extensively. The U.S. Supreme Court has called the Commentaries “the preeminent authority on English law for the founding generation.”
The influence runs into specific constitutional provisions. Blackstone’s emphasis on personal security, personal liberty, and private property shaped the language of the Declaration of Independence. His theory of prior restraint informed the First Amendment’s press protections. His castle doctrine fed directly into the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches. Terms like habeas corpus and ex post facto that appear in the Constitution drew their operative meaning from his definitions.
The practical reach extended past the founding. The Commentaries served as the primary law textbook in American legal education throughout the nineteenth century. Abraham Lincoln reportedly taught himself law by reading Blackstone. In a legal culture with no established law schools for its first several decades, the work functioned as both curriculum and reference library.
He Served in Parliament and on the Bench
Blackstone entered the House of Commons in 1761 as the member for Hindon and served until 1770. His parliamentary career collided uncomfortably with his theoretical principles.
The defining episode came during the John Wilkes controversy in 1769. Wilkes, a radical MP repeatedly expelled by the Commons, kept winning re-election. Blackstone spoke in support of the government’s refusal to seat him, arguing the House had power to declare expelled members ineligible. Wilkes’s supporters then turned the Commentaries against their author, pointing to his written statement that “every subject of the realm is eligible of common right” and that only nine specific disqualifications existed, none of which included expulsion. Blackstone quietly added a qualifying footnote in the next edition, acknowledging that “there are instances, wherein persons in particular circumstances have forfeited that common right.” His critics never let him forget it.
Blackstone also held the position of Solicitor General to Queen Charlotte from late 1763 until early 1770. In February 1770 he was appointed a justice of the Court of King’s Bench, the primary court for criminal matters and cases involving the crown. He soon transferred to the Court of Common Pleas, where he spent the rest of his career hearing disputes between private citizens. As a judge he was cautious and methodical, sticking closely to established precedent rather than pushing novel interpretations. He served on the bench until his death in 1780.
He Helped Draft the Penitentiary Act of 1779
Near the end of his life, Blackstone worked alongside the prison reformer John Howard to draft the Penitentiary Act of 1779, one of the earliest English statutes to promote imprisonment as an alternative to execution or transportation to penal colonies. The act envisioned a reformed prison system focused on confinement rather than corporal punishment. At Blackstone’s insistence, Howard was appointed one of the three supervisors charged with implementing it. The immediate practical impact was limited, but the act was an early legislative step toward modern ideas about sentencing and rehabilitation.
How His Work Was Received
Blackstone was not without detractors. The utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham made dismantling the Commentaries something of a personal project. Bentham’s core objection was that Blackstone acted as an “expositor” of existing law rather than a critic of it. By explaining and justifying the law as it was, Bentham argued, Blackstone implicitly endorsed it and lent intellectual respectability to rules that were outdated or unjust. Bentham also attacked the reasoning as inconsistent and imprecise and objected to the notion that human laws must never contradict natural law, calling it a “dangerous maxim” that could justify rebellion against any unpopular statute.
The criticism had some merit. Blackstone did tend to present the English legal system as more rational and coherent than it actually was, smoothing over contradictions and treating historical accidents as if they reflected deep wisdom. That same quality is part of why the work proved so useful. By imposing order on chaos, Blackstone gave lawyers, students, and citizens a way to understand a legal system that had previously been accessible only to specialists, and that is why the Commentaries remain in print and in citation today.