Blackstone and his Commentaries

As readers familiar with the Syntopicon to Great Books of the Western World know, each of its Great Ideas includes not only references to the subtopics in works in the set, but also Additional Readings relevant to the Great Idea. The latter are collected in a Bibliography of Additional Readings (97 pages in the second edition).

Commentaries on the Law of England (1758) by Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780) is one of those works, found in the Bibligraphy of both editions of GBWW. For a taste of it, the latest issue of Chapter One: A Journal of Law Books includes The Ultimate Oldie but Goodie: William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Law of England, by Robert C. Berring, Introduction: Law and Artifice in Blackstone’s Commentaries, by Jessie Allen, and Commentaries on the Laws of England: Introduction. Section the First. On the Study of Law, by William Blackstone.