As a part of the political education of the period was the growing conviction, long held by Maryland, that the common law of England, modified in certain matters by Parliamentary enactments, was the supreme law; that it was one and the same for each colony and that by means of it everyone was guaranteed in his rights as an Englishman. Appeals to England, which at an earlier time had been discouraged, were now claimed as a matter of right, so that if a colonial court failed to declare the law in accordance with the common law, an English court of appeal had jurisdiction to remedy the error. As the judges in the Crown colonies were appointed during good behavior and tended, therefore, to hold to prerogative, their decisions in matters of public right were apt to be unpopular.
The appearance of trained lawyers and ,the removal of the ban placed upon the legal pro fession had much to do with the change in pro cedure. Local prejudices and slip-shod methods of practice gave way before a regulated system based upon the common law. Not until the second half of the 18th century, however, was the American lawyer a person of great public influence. The generation which stood for polit ical independence and furnished men of affairs was one of lawyers. English lawbooks and re ports were imported. Procedure was copied from that obtaining in the English courts. Pleading according to the rules of the common law was introduced with all the old techni calities.
Holding by commission from the Crown, the colonial governor assumed to a greater or less extent the functions of a chancellor and gave relief in equity. As the governor derived his chancery powers' from the king, recourse to him was never popular. While in England equity had become an independent system under the chancellorship of Lord Hardwicke (1736-56), in the American colonies the chancery courts re mained in a rudimentary state. In every colony, however, there was a court having a semblance of chancery powers. Pennsylvania adopted in her early codes a system unique in the history of jurisprudence, in that in the courts of the colony, having both law and equity powers, equitable rights were administered under com mon-law forms.
The period may be characterized as one in which courts were organized as far as possible like those of England, rendering decisions ac cording to the common law, introduced by lawyers and welcomed by the people as a part of their liberties. The uniform character of the common law superseded local custom as far as practicable, while the earlier colonial codes cov ering many matters of criminal law and neces sarily local economic regulations remained in force.
The Period of Extension (1776-1850).— The legal changes entailed by the War of Inde pendence were largely of a constitutional char acter, a discussion of which is beyond the scope of the present article. The ideas of which the Revolution was the outgrowth contributed vastly to the development of an American juris prudence sufficiently distinct from that of Eng land and of the later colonial period as to be a separate system. Speculative writers like Montesquieu, Burlamaqui and Vattel exerted an influence which was apparent not only in matters of constitutional organization but also in the habits of thought of the American bar.
Of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Inde pendence 35 were lawyers. The American na tion began not so much with the promulgation of a revolutionary manifesto as by a declaration of principles of natural law, the fruit of Amer ican legal minds. It is of no little significance that more copies of Blackstone's (Commen taries,) the first systematic exposition of Eng lish law, were sold during the 18th century in America than in England.
Independence brought about a change in the fundamental organization of every State.
Each adopted a written constitution or (as in Rhode Island and Connecticut) continued in force its colonial charter as a sufficient declara tion of constitutional matters, and in each it was necessary to construe them. Experience and theory left such construction to the courts and the supreme rule which guided was that of the common law. In every State varying writ ten constitutions construed according to the principles of the common law tended to the formation of fairly uniform ideas of constitu tional law. The Federal Constitution provided what the Articles of Confederation had almost completely lacked. The courts authorized by the Constitution acquired jurisdiction not only of constitutional questions, disputes between States and admiralty matters, but also, within certain limitations, of cases wherein citizens of different States were parties. Both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution provided that full faith and credit should be given to the proceedings of a State court by the courts of every other State and an essentially national character was impressed upon American juris prudence. Thus, while the Federal courts had exclusive jurisdiction in certain cases (a power which the decisions of Chief Justice Marshall greatly increased), the division was not as be tween matters of purely public and those of private law. All the courts, State and national, became necessary and component parts of one symmetrical system, in which there was one ap proximately uniform mode of procedure, that of the common law of England, consciously adapted to American needs. Judges appointed by popu larly elected governors or elected directly by the people, decided questions of law and equity pre sented by lawyers who had little of the class traditions of the English barrister. The Amer ican lawyer was from the first amenable to democratic influences. The requisites for ad mission to the bar were determined by State laws and not by slavish adherence to the tradi tions of the Inns of Court. The lawyer know ing no distinction between barrister and attor ney, as obtained in England, gave advice to clients and tried their cases himself ; he was not a member of a caste but of a more or less demo cratic society. The position which he assumed was one 'in which activity in politics was ex pected as well as accessibility to clients in mat ters more particularly concerning his profession. The influence of the American bench and bar has generally been to assist in making law to conform to social needs, or, in other words, in the democratization of law.