1Edmund Randolph’s Notes on the Common Law, [ca. September] 1799 (Madison Papers)
Among the materials JM drew on for his Report of 1800 were some notes written by Edmund Randolph for a projected essay on the question of whether there was a federal common law of crimes. Although the editors have found no evidence that JM commented on this paper to anyone, its presence in JM’s papers points to its use by the author of the report. The idea that the entire body of English...
2Memorandum from Edmund Randolph, [ca. December] 1799 (Madison Papers)
These “hasty notes” were most probably replies to queries (not found) that JM had posed to Edmund Randolph sometime during the early days of the Virginia General Assembly session in 1799. In his research for that part of the Report of 1800 that dealt with the common law, JM no doubt surveyed the handful of important court decisions that supported the doctrine that the English common law was...