ABSTRACT
Introduction Having witnessed the various abuses of power possible through the laws and courts in a monarchy, America’s Founding Fathers were determined to avoid the duplication of a legal system with such explicit potential to further the aims of those in power. Given that the initial waves of colonization of what would become the United States came mostly from England, it is not particularly surprising that the U.S. legal system draws heavily on the traditions of English common law. Yet in the process of seeking a fresh start in the New World, those colonists almost immediately began modifying their legal traditions. As early as 1636, the leaders of the Plymouth Colony, in codifying the rst written laws set down on American shores, deliberately departed from English traditions in certain respects. From creating the concept of civil marriage (under English law marriage was possible only through the church) to granting property rights to widows and changing the rules governing property inheritance to establishing a formal recording system for titles, mortgages, and other conveyances of property, the colonists took advantage of the opportunity to build a legal system in much the same manner as they were building their settlements-from bare ground up.1
