Books by John Phillip Reid

Roscoe Pound has called Charles Doe (1830-1896) one of the ten greatest jurists in American history, the "one judge upon the bench of a state court who stands out as a builder of the law since the Civil War." This is the first booklength biography of Chief Justice Doe, and as an examination of the constitutional and jurisprudential theories of a state judge it is probably unique.

By the time of the first European contact, the Cherokee Nation had already developed a sophisticated government which embodied a belief in liberty and equality as well as a system of laws regarding murder, property, marriage, warfare, and international relations. This work explores the relationship between the members of the tribe and their law.

Provides knowledge about the judicial history of the early republic by recounting the development of courts, laws, and legal theory in New Hampshire. This title chronicles the struggle by which lawyers and torchbearers of strong, centralized government sought to bring standards of competence to New Hampshire.

"Rule of law" - the idea that the law is the nation's sovereign authority - has served as a cornerstone for constitutional theory and the jurisprudence of liberty. John Phillip Reid traces the concept's progress through a series of landmark events in Great Britain and North America.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, English and American lawyers appealed to the ancient constitution as the cornerstone of liberty. The author demonstrates that this concept of an unchanging, ancient constitution, furnished English common lawyers and parliamentarians an argument with which to combat royal prerogative power.