As professor of law at the College of William and Mary, St. George
Tucker in 1803 published View of the Constitution-the first
extended, systematic commentary on the United States Constitution
after its ratification and later its amendment by the Bill of
Rights. View was originally part of Tucker's
"Americanized" or "republicanized" edition of
the multivolume Commentaries on the Laws of England by Sir
William Blackstone. Generations of American law students,
lawyers, judges, and statesmen learned their Blackstone-and also
their understanding of the Constitution-through Tucker. As Clyde N.
Wilson notes, "Tucker is the exponent of Jeffersonian
republicanism . . . in contrast to the commercial republicanism of
New England that has since the Civil War been taken to be the only
true form of American philosophy." In addition to the entirety
of View, the Liberty Fund volume includes seven other essays
from Tucker's renowned edition of Blackstone. These include "On
the Study of Law," "Of the Unwritten, or Common Law of
England," and "Of the Several Forms of
Government."
St. George Tucker (1752-1827) was an officer in the American
Revolutionary Army, a Professor of Law, justice of the Supreme Court
of Virginia, judge of the Federal District Court for Virginia by
appointment of President James Madison, progenitor of a long line of
jurists and scholars, and stepfather of John Randolph of
Roanoke.
Clyde N. Wilson is Professor of History and Editor of The
Papers of John C. Calhoun at the University of South Carolina.
