Compromises of Conflicting Claims: A Century of California Law in the Period 1760-1860 Book

It's taken me nearly a year to get through this in its entirety, having originally read the first couple chapters for a paper I was writing on Edward Coke, and then setting it down for some months. But now that I have returned to it, this is a most stunning and comprehensive work. Pocock's narrative explains the common law mindset based around the ancient constitution--the body of customary law established from time immemorial--and its genealogy through Coke and Hale (and up to Burke); its foe in positive law laid down by the Hobbesian sovereign, whether by a sovereign parliament or absolute monarch, based in debates over whether William was conqueror or English law had its origins in German law; and its ultimate death-by-salvation in the timelessness of Locke's Whig social contract. The book is incredibly dense and presupposes a depth of knowledge which I have, in two years of legal and historical study, only begun to scratch the surface--but the amount that it explains and elucidates about the emergence of our modern politics from the late-Medieval mindset is simply astounding and worth every moment spent.