Dutton v Howell (1693)
Dutton v Howard (1693) is an early modern English court case,[1] notable for establishing the doctrine that English law was established in English Plantations in the New Worlds,[2] and the maxim that The Laws of England are the Birthright of the English.[3][4]
It also established that colonies in unoccupied lands were under English law, and those that were conquered lands retained the laws from prior to conquest. Specifically when:
“Certain subjects of England, by consent of their Prince, go and possess an uninhabited desert Country; the Common law must be supposed their Rule, as 'twas their birthright... When they went whither they no more abandoned English law than their allegiance."[5]
For example the "Judges decided that Barbados was a “plantation or new Settlement of Englishmen by the King's Consent in an uninhabited country,” which meant that settlers must abide by the same laws as in force in England".[6]
References
[edit]- ^ William Blackstone, The Oxford Edition of Blackstone's: Commentaries on the Laws of England.(Oxford University Press, 2016) p 75.
- ^ Charles Mitchell, Paul Mitchell, Landmark Cases in Equity (Bloomsbury Publishing, 6 Jul. 2012)
- ^ Dutton v Howard 1693 1 ER 17.
- ^ P. G. McHugh, Aboriginal Title: The Modern Jurisprudence of Tribal Land Rights (OUP Oxford, 2011).
- ^ Craig Yirush, Settlers, Liberty, and Empire: The Roots of Early American Political Theory, 1675–1775 (Cambridge University Press, 28 Feb. 2011)p42.
- ^ Hannah Weiss Muller, Subjects and Sovereign: Bonds of Belonging in the Eighteenth-Century British Empire, (Oxford University Press, 2017).