Sir William Blackstone

William Blackstone (1723–1780) was an English jurist, educated at Oxford and called to the bar in 1746. Having little success as an advocate, he returned to Oxford and in 1753 began the first lectures on English law ever given at an English university, becoming the first Vinerian Professor in 1758. The Commentaries on the Laws of England, published in four volumes between 1765 and 1769, grew from those lectures and made the common law intelligible to laymen for the first time; they were the legal education of the American founders. He was knighted in 1770 and became a judge of the Court of Common Pleas.