ABSTRACT
William Blackstone was the most influential British legal scholar of the eighteenth century, and his consolidation of English common law had a profound influence upon American legal thought. Blackstone's greatest skills lay in writing clearly and with organizational coherence on legal subjects that were often turgid, technical, and dry. Nevertheless, Blackstone was no innovator, and the Commentaries often resemble a grab-bag of different contemporary schools of law, including natural law, ancient constitutionalism, and social-contract theory. Blackstone aimed to educate law students, but his intended audience also included the British landed gentry who he believed needed to understand their duty to sustain and protect the system of civil liberty enshrined in the common law heritage. Despite his antirevolutionary character, Blackstone presented an overall conservative message, and he supported private property and separation of powers. Blackstone famously argued that English freedom of the press prohibited restraint prior to publication but permitted punishments after publication for offenses such as libel, sedition, or blasphemy.
