Reception of English law & the earliest American cases

Before there was American case law, there was English law — and American courts, both before and after the Constitution, drew directly on it. Two ideas explain how English law became American law: the reception of English common law, and the earliest American decisions building on it.

Reception statutes

A reception statute is how a state formally adopted the English common law (and often English statutes) in force as of a chosen cut-off date — keeping it as state law except where repugnant to the state’s own constitution and enactments. The reception date and terms vary by state, which is why “the common law” is not identical from one state to the next.

Pre-Revolution British cases & the earliest American case law

Pre-Revolution British cases were the working law of the colonies and continued to be cited afterward as persuasive authority. And America’s earliest reported decisions show the transition in progress. A landmark example is Respublica v. De Longchamps, 1 U.S. (1 Dall.) 111 (1784) — decided in Pennsylvania, before the Constitution was written. Charles De Longchamps assaulted a French diplomat; the court held that the law of nations (customary international law) was part of the law of Pennsylvania, and that an offense against a foreign minister was “a crime against the whole world.”

“The person of a public minister is sacred and inviolable.” Respublica v. De Longchamps, 1 U.S. (1 Dall.) 111 (Pa. 1784) (McKean, C.J.).

De Longchamps is a founding-era illustration of two things at once: American courts receiving established legal principles (here, the law of nations) and generating the earliest American case law — the first volume of U.S. Reports, no less — before the constitutional order was even in place.