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Census Of Law Books In Colonial Virginia By William Hamilton Bryson, E. Lee Shepard

University of Richmond Law Review

A decade ago Stanley Katz asserted that the eighteenth century American lawyer exhibited "a surprising familiarity with contemporary English law and a high degree of technical competence," and challenged legal historians to reappraise traditional views of the colonial bar. To a great extent this task has been undertaken, but the legal history of early Virginia still languishes. Anxious to rectify this situation, Professor W. Hamilton Bryson of the University of Richmond School of Law has compiled a "census" of law books in early Virginia, hoping to "shed some light on the law which shaped the lawyers who shaped the nation."