Framers Legal Mentor

“At the time of the adoption of the Federal Constitution, William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England] had been published about twenty years, and * * * more copies of the work had been sold in this country than in England; so that undoubtedly, the framers of the Constitution were familiar with it”,[1] and considered it “the preeminent authority on English law”,[2] every legally literate American was also aware of the general rule for statutory construction which Blackstone taught.