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The new Liberty Fund edition of The Selected Writings of Sir Edward Coke includes selections from the four volumes of the Institutes and cases from the Reports, and several of Coke’s speeches in Parliament. Taken together, these writings delineate the origin and nature of the modern common law and indicate the profound interrelationship in the English tradition of custom, common law, authority (of both Crown and Commons), and individual liberty. Coke’s great law books and speeches are well represented on Magna Carta, citizenship, habeas corpus, freedom from wrongful search and arrest, the origins of law, judicial review, administrative law, judging, criminal law, the moral obligations of officials, the powers of King, Parliament, church, and the law, property and rights, and the profession and study of law. The Selected Writings of Sir Edward Coke is the first anthology of his works ever published.

Vol. 1 of a 3 vol. set of The Selected Writings. This volume contains a long introduction by the editor and 13 parts of the Reports.

"Four hundred years ago, Sir Edward Coke published the first volume of his Reports. In time, his publications would include a surprisingly comprehensive set of cases and treatises that would help to modernize the law. Moreover, his decisions as a judge and arguments as a statesman uniquely contributed to the foundation of the law as an institution independent of the political powers of the state and capable of defending the freedom of the citizen. It is fair to say that no one has contributed more to create the modern notion of the rule of law.
… Coke’s influence was great at a pivotal moment in English and American history. Teetering at the end of the 1500s, the Tudor England of which Coke wrote and in which he was the master lawyer had seen the end of the feudal order and the dawn of the commercial age. The Stuart England in which he judged saw the adolescence of the printed book, of King James’s Bible and Shakespeare’s plays. Moreover, it was an age in which kings sought ever more control over the affairs of state and of individuals but in which individuals had both new ideas about their own opportunities and new money with which to pursue them. The conflicts that emerged to be solved by the law—disputes about property, colonies, commerce, employment, bankruptcy, reputation, natural resources, religion, taxes, crimes, representative and bureaucratic government, and liberty—were taking on many new dimensions."

Sir Edward Coke

Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634), the first judge to strike down a law, gave us modern common law by turning medieval common law inside-out. Through his resisting strong-minded kings, he bore witness for judicial independence. Coke is the earliest judge still cited routinely by practicing lawyers.