Statute law in colonial Virginia : governors, assemblymen, and the revisals that forged the Old Dominion /

In the General Assembly of February 1623/24, Virginia's Governor Sir Francis Wyatt and leading colonists adopted "a body of statutes to exert order across the English settlements" (p. 1). This action claimed significant legislative authority for the General Assembly and set it on the course it would follow throughout the Colonial period. Occasionally in the years after 1623/24 circumstances warranted revisions to the colony's laws, and Billings (emer., Univ. of New Orleans)--the foremost expert on Colonial Virginia's legal system--tells the story of the revisals of 1632, 1643, 1652, 1658, 1662, 1705, and 1748 over eight chapters in this slender yet important volume. Chapter 1 sets the stage for the Acts of 1623/24, while subsequent chapters examine each revisal of the colony's laws. A brief concluding chapter contextualizes lawmaking in Virginia in terms of developments in other colonies, and Billings argues for the value "in seeing the centrality of statues as a new means of comprehending early Virginia in the way its lawmakers saw it" (p. 120). This thoroughly researched account, written by a master historian, casts new light on the hybrid nature of Virginia statute law and its connection with English law. It will interest advanced students and historians of US legal development. Summing Up: Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty. --Thomas Daniel Knight, The University of Texas -- Rio Grande Valley