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.
Access materials on the Course Readings page.
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
Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (1939).