Ideology and Illusion in Colonial Legal Development

European settlement in North America, and in particular the English settlements, can only be understood in relation to expectations created by intellectual structures that pre-existed the experience of migration. Legal development must therefore be approached through the understanding of the larger mentality of settlement.

Readings

Access materials on the [Course Readings] page.

Assigned

John Winthrop, A Modell of Christian Charitie (1630).

Eben Moglen, Settling the Law (1993), Beginnings, 1664-1691

George Lee Haskins, Law and Authority in Early Massachusetts (1968), chapters 1 & 2

Suggested

Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (1939).

Notes and Materials

Projects