An important signed book from Buchanan's legal library: Reports of Edward Coke, Parts V-VII. London: Printed by the Assigns of Rich, and Edw. Atkins Esquires; for Samuel Keble at the Turks-Head in Fleet-street, and John Walthoe, in Vine-Court, Middle Temple, 1697. Hardcover bound in contemporary leather, 8.5 x 12.75. Signed on the title page in crisp black ink, "James Buchanan"; also evidently signed by two owners prior to him. While the title pages are predominately in French, the text of the work is in French, English, and Latin. Autographic condition: very good to fine, with light staining and creasing to signed page (not affecting Buchanan's bold signature). Book condition: VG-/None, with significant scattered scuffing and staining to exterior, chipping at spine ends, and the pages in Part VII substantially browned and stained; the pages in Parts V and VI are generally quite clean, and the binding is tight.
Considered to be the greatest jurist of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, Edward Coke is widely remembered for his legal writings, including thirteen volumes of law reports (three of which have been bound together in a single book), and the four-volume Institutes of the Lawes of England. Writing in the Cornell Law Quarterly, Theodore Plucknett describes Coke's reports as works of 'incomparable richness' which had a 'profound influence upon the literature, and indeed the substance, of English law.' Even Francis Bacon, Coke's rival, wrote in praise of them, saying: 'Had it not been for Sir Edward Coke's Reports (which though they may have errors, and some peremptory and extrajudicial resolutions more than are warranted, yet they contain infinite good decisions and rulings over of cases), for the law by this time had been almost like a ship without ballast; for that the cases of modern experience are fled from those that are adjudged and ruled in former time.' As a matter of precedence in the United States, Sir Edward Coke's work formed the foundation for justification in nullifying the 1765 Stamp Act, as well as the basis of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, among other significant influences. Aside from the legal importance of the work itself, this book, printed in 1697, exists as one of the oldest volumes signed by an American president in private hands.
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