more or less continually in issue and concerning which the Council developed 
a body of rules that seem to us considerably more palpable than the variegated 
decisions in the private law field. These matters concern the problems of the 
extension and interpretation of acts of Parliament and of the interpretation of 
colonial acts (all of which will be considered in this chapter); the problems of 
avoiding colonial acts and of establishing certain constitutional standards for 
the dominions (to be considered at large in our next chapter). 
THE EXTENSION OF ACTS OF PARLIAMENT 
As a matter both of chronology and of convenience, the point of departure for 
any study of statutory extension must be the formula of the early charters 
which conveyed legislative power with the proviso respecting agreement or 
nonrepugnancy with the laws and statutes of England. 3 This formula was 
currently employed in patents of incorporation as a monition respecting the 
manner in which the by-law powers of domestic corporations were to be 
exercised, such bodies being in all respects subject to the common law and the 
statutes of the realm. On the face of things there would seem to be some room 
necessity were tied to provincial forms, the 
product in many cases of the peculiar development 
in each plantation. The number of 
manuscript "president" or form books that 
have survived are persuasive on this. In many 
of these collections the forms are copies or close 
adaptations of English exemplars. We venture 
to suppose that if the correctness of any such 
local form came in issue, English "precedent" 
would prevail (cf. the argument on writs of 
adjournment in Jay MSS, Box 3, 160 [NYHS]). 
The evidence we have on the citation of 
colonial judicial decisions—and it is scanty — 
reminds one of the examples in English 
medieval sources, where counsel or court recall 
something done or said at some previous term. 
Much of this also has to do with practice. See, 
for a New York example, the citation of King 
v. Lydius (a local cause celebre) in the later 
King v. Van Tassel (Goebel and Naughton, 
Law Enforcement in Colonial New Yor\, 542— 
43); for Connecticut, die instances in The Superior 
Court Diary of William Samuel Johnson, 
J772-/777 (ed. by J. T. Farrell, 1942), 68, 
137, 255, 270; for Virginia, Reeves v. 
Waller, 1733 (Jefferson Rep., 8). Where a 
peculiar institution like slavery was concerned, 
previous colonial decisions were cited on points 
of substantive law, e.g., Jones v. Langhorn, 
1736 (Jefferson Rep., 38-39); Brent v. Porter, 
1768 (ibid., 72); Blackwell v. Wilkinson, 1768 
Two final exhibits on the matter are, first, 
Jefferson's comment in the preface to his Reports 
that in the years 1730-40 the judges of 
the General Court were chosen without regard 
to legal knowledge so "their decisions could 
never be quoted either as adding to or detracting 
from, the weight of those of the English 
courts, on the same points. Whereas, on our 
peculiar laws their judgments, whether formed 
on correct principles of law or not, were of 
conclusive autiiority. As precedents, they 
established authoritatively the construction of 
our own enactments and gave them shape and 
meaning, under which our property has been 
ever since transmitted." The second exhibit is 
from Maryland, Ben v. Bett {Harris and 
M'Henry, 409, 418), where counsel in 1771 
argued: "A manuscript case is relied on, to 
which I give no credit. Ist Because the autiiorities 
in the books viz. Carth. 514, 2 Stra. 1255 
are expressly contrary and it would be dangerous 
to overthrow solemn resolutions by loose 
notes." 
3 The charters are not entirely consistent. For 
example, in the charters for Massachusetts Bay 
(1629) and Connecticut (1662) the word 
"statutes" is omitted; the word "custom" appears 
in that of Maryland (1632) and Carolina 
(1663). Of course, taken in its largest sense 
the expression "laws of England" includes acts 
of Parliament as well as general usages.