The collected works of Jeremy Bentham: A comment on the commentaries and A fragment on goverment
Oxford, 1977
Abstract
In the two related works in this volume, Bentham offers a detailed critique of William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-9). He provides important refelctions on the nature of law, and more particularly on the nature of customary and statute law, and on judicial interpretation.
Quotes from this work
It is wonderful how forward some have been to look upon it as a kind of presumption and ingratitude, and rebellion, and cruelty, and I know not what besides, not to allege only, nor to own, but to suffer any one so much as to imagine, than an old-established law could in any respect be a fit object of condemnation. Whether it has been a kind of personification that has been the cause of this, as if the Law were a living creature, or whether it has been the mechanical veneration of antiquity, or what other delusion of the fancy, I shall not here enquire. For my part, I know not for what good reason it is that the merit of justifying a law when right should have been thought greater, than that of censuring it when wrong.