The Many Legalities of Early America

“More impressive even than the range of places and peoples the essays address is the variety of approaches to 'legality.' . . . A book whose aggregate argument makes it not just good and interesting but essential.” — ##Journal of American History#

“These authors have found a rich, complex world that offers great promise for future scholarship. That they brought together a series of essays on such disparate subjects and presented a central thesis in such a compelling manner is a tribute to the quality of the conference, the authors' scholarship, and the editors' skill.” — Journal of the Early Republic

“The Many Legalities of Early America is an important contribution to legal history, marking a maturing of the scholarship as it directs our attention to a number of interesting new areas of research.” — Law and History Review

“Tomlins and Mann have succeeded where most have failed. The Many Legalities of Early America demonstrates the remarkable growth not just of our knowledge of how law worked in colonial society, but of how the concepts and practices of legality gave meaning to the colonial experience. This is a rich volume that will stand for some time as the single most important text on the relation of law to life in our early history.” — Stanley N. Katz, Princeton University

“A giant step forward! By conceptualizing legal issues as social and political legalities, these essays add a new dimension to the study of early American law and make it accessible to all historians. They lay the basis for a new and more inclusive synthesis of the colonial experience.” — James Henretta, University of Maryland

"The Many Legalities of Early America disrupts much that we thought we knew about early