Impressed by her scholarship in Madison ' Hand, I just finished Mary Sarah Bilder's earlier book, The Transatlantic Constitution : Colonial Legal Culture and the Empire (Harvard University Press, 2004). Focus is chiefly on Rhode Island, but her discussion of advantages of compiling legal codes as opposed to publishing session laws in order to evade Privy Council scrutiny of laws "repugnant" to English law (pp. 59ff) struck me as a perspective on contemporary (late-17th- early-18th century) Virginia practice that might interest some VA-HIST folks. ______________________________________ To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html