James Kalb
Yale Law School
Supervised Analytic Writing—Barbara Black, supervisor
1977
Draft
This paper deals with developments in the substantive criminal law of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York during what I shall call the “eighteenth century”: the period beginning in Pennsylvania in 1682 with the founding of the proprietary government, in Massachusetts in 1692 with the granting of the Provincial Charter, and in New York in 1691 with the reformation of the court system and the permanent establishment of a legislature. These three colonies, although neighbors, differed radically from each other and from England in their origins, in their political and social arrangements, and in the ethnic and religious makeup of their people. They were thus representative of the diversity of the British colonies in North America, and accordingly one would expect to find great differences in their law, including their criminal law. In the beginning such differences existed. However, during the course of the eighteenth century the criminal law of each of the colonies grew much more like that of England. By the time of the Revolution the original differences from English law had largely disappeared, and the criminal law of the three colonies, especially Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, had become remarkably uniform.