So… what is the very last surviving law passed by the British Parliament or British governor still recognized by law in the US as still valid law, in standing?
I’m not talking about states post revolutionary war that joined the Union that had British or Canadian laws, admitted in years after the revolutionary war ended… I’m talking about the United States, signed off on the declaration of independence, continental Congress already in place for a year… what is the very last law we still accept as part of our legal code?
I know marriage contracts, business contracts even after the revolution was declared but prior to the British pullout is recognized, we recognize legislative precident as continuing, but what is the dead last law we accept before we told Parliament to go and f itself?
I want to read up about it, who passed the bill, persona, debate, if anyone realized later on the importance of what just occurred.
It would depend on the state. A state legislature might have repealed any particular piece of legislation, or not. A very large number of British laws are still in force across the USA, including the vast corpus of Common Law. If you want to know the very last Act passed at Westminster still in force in any part of the USA, check the legislation passed by each state legislature, from the Revolution to the present day, to determine which Acts it has repealed in that time. This also applies to states that weren’t even set up till later, because most of them adopted English Common Law as their own law upon their establishment. Without this, they would have had no juries, judges, courts, legal process, and a huge number of laws would not exist. Murder, for example, is illegal under Common Law, and there has never, therefore, been any statute passed against it by parliament.
I’m not counting common law, because it’s tricky… some states like Virginia arbitrarily state when the cessession takes effect, but west Virginia goes by the older system. However, in Virginia, Lord Dunmore evacuated to a ship early on, and don’t believe any of his statues we’re kept, but the courthouses under Virginia did continue for some time, and he can be credited with the first birthings of Canada at it’s earliest point by creating a Anti-American Army to kill Indians and tie the western Virginian frontier down so they wouldn’t rebel in a future succession… it was the nastiest Indian war to date, and a lot of loyalist guerillas got famous in this era. This is a continuation of British policy well into the US era, but not law passed by Parliament.
Likewise, I don’t know if any loyalist house of burgesses operated once the loyalists broke away and backed the king, but I know no judge of a English law tradition would mistake the laws of a alien, enemy legislator over that if their own… so I’m guessing once each state committed to defending the colonies, the competing legislators we’re producing sterile laws future Americans wouldn’t recognize as legitimate… but who knows, maybe one or two snuck in.
Its really the English Parliament I’m interested in. The last surviving law they passed, that US judges look at and say “Yep, that’s our law”.
This was repealed in the UK in 1963. But, for all I know, New York might never have got round to repealing it, whereas Virginia could have done so years ago. You would have to check.
Here’s a good example, the Witchcraft Act 1735. Given its date, it probably isn’t the last British Act still in force in the USA, but I imagine that at least some states still have it on their statute books:
It was repealed in the UK in 1951, but in the Austrialian state of Victoria, not until 1971. In the Australian state of Queensland, it is still in force. It is also still in force in Israel, which is a better analogy for the USA, since Israel broke from British rule through violent revolution.
It is still technically on the lawbooks in West Virginia, but someone has penciled into it “Don’t enforce this law”, so that umm… I guess we can’t enforce it by virtue of graphite annotation. Same for our Communist laws, still on the books… McCarthy started his red scare here… but the pencil says don’t. I’m not even allowed to wear a top hat or a sombero in the theater, laws always getting in the way of my plans…
We keep those laws around for novel emergencies, so we can arrest and hold someone who did something so stupid no one ever thought to make it a crime, cause everyone knows not to do it… you can hold them on a absurdity long enough for the prosecuted to figure out why it’s illegal to inflate a hot air balloon inside a public building. Sometimes it’s self evident you need arresting, and yet the actual technicality eludes you. Other times, like after the civil war, old laws we’re used as part of constitutional cases, cases legitimating violence and illigetimate violence goes back to the right to combat… never outlawed in the US… but until Zoots gets arrested again, nobody in US history ever asserted their right to it. I really want to do it in traffic court if they deny me a jury trial of defence… if it’s just me vs judge, then I’m giving either that judge, or a legally elected/appointed judge who passed the state bar association… and Ill demand a speedy trial so he doesn’t drag ass and get some pro wrestler a honorary law degree and quick pass on the board and seat in court. Dismiss it or we fight, only so many traffic judges around, good chance I can take the best of them.
Funny but um, technically possible. If you strip it from our law, then next time we have a civil war, the supreme court precedent from the last civil war gets curtailed. Makes rationalizing tough situations difficult when you have a judge after the fact trying to rationalize rulings from competing court systems, acts of murder linked to rebellions, etc.