Lawrence A Cremin, American Education The National Experience, 1783-1876 (New York Harper & Row, 1980),

Morton J Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860 (Cambridge, Mass Harvard University Press, 1977)

Blackstone.

A major development in the study of law took place in 1772 when the first American edition of Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1803) was printed on a subscription basis. Approximately 840 Americans subscribed, purchasing over fifteen hundred sets priced at sixteen dollars a set. Among the first subscribers were Thomas Marshall (John Marshall's father), John Adams, John Jay, George Wythe, and James Wilson. Blackstone quickly became the centerpiece of a young man's reading program. A member of Parliament and professor of English law at Oxford University, Blackstone undertook the task of creating a guide to English law—an attempt to give order and clarity to centuries of largely uncodified common law. His Commentaries...