HAWLES, John. The Englishman's Right; A Dialogue between a Barrister at Law and a Juryman. (1844)

AUTHOR: HAWLES, John. 

TITLE: The Englishman's Right; A Dialogue between a Barrister at Law and a Juryman.

PUBLISHER: London: Gower's Walk, Whitechapel, 1844.

DESCRIPTION: 1 vol., (iv)81pp., 8-3/16" x 5-1/2", bound in full dark straight grained maroon morocco, covers ruled in gilt and blind, title gilt to front cover, gilt dentelles, marbled pastedowns and endpapers, all edges gilt.

CONDITION: Internally clean and bright, hinges fine, head of spine rubbed with slight loss, gift inscription dated 1849 to front blank endleaf, otherwise VERY GOOD.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Later Free-School edition of Sir John Hawles' foundational legal text, codifying the principle that juries are "the people's instrument in protecting their liberties," singled out by Jefferson, who had a copy in his library, as key in representing "the American understanding of the value of adjudication by '12 honest jurymen' (Origins of Reasonable Doubt).

"The most famous text on jury trial of the 17th and 18th centuries" was Englishman's Right: "the first American reprint of any English law book. It was published in Boston in 1693 and reprinted again in America in 1772"—the year before the Boston Tea Party (Shapiro, Beyond Reasonable Doubt, 290n). Hawles, solicitor general under William and Mary, codified the principle "that the jury was the people's instrument in protecting their liberties" (Dearest Birth Right, 119-20). "Englishman's Right belonged in the library of every liberty-minded American in the age of Revolution. When Jefferson was asked in 1789 to recommend books on jury trial for use by the French revolutionaries, for example, he picked Hawks" (Whitman, Origins of Reasonable Doubt, 12-28). By the time of the Revolution, "trial by jury was probably the most common right in all the colonies" (Levy, Origins of the Bill of Rights, 225). First published in London in 1680 and in America in 1693, both editions nearly unobtainable; this 19th-century edition, published by the Free-School of London, was edited by Daniel Rollins.