The absence of Common Law adherence in light of our Constitution, at least in the schools, makes Professor Stoner's attempt at revival a refreshment. Indispensible for current dialogue, the work reflects that genre of American jurisprudence regarding Magna Carta as "extortion." In that vein, the professor walks a fine line between the "liberty" afforded in at least the process and the clear tradition he has identified in common law underpinning the force of the state, and there going to public libel. Thus, we see the claim of custom and usage refined to rule and doctrine emerging in an "unwritten" way from "legislation" and "Christianity" denoting a compatibility with the British Constitution, and there in contrast with "liberalism" which he defines in the genre of Justice Holmes and coming from the political writings of Hobbes, Spinoza and Locke, among others. In tracing the political theory behind his perception, Professor Stoner minimizes, but at least diminishes the impact of the Reformation and its outgrowth as well as roots in the formative stages of the Common law as it was understood before the Framing and beyond, to the extent no distinction is made between the practical effects of the authority of the Lord working on and in the individual apart from the law giving rise to separation and the province of Lex Rex and the gradual convolution of that private authority to the specific "reasoning" of the judge, even as a law unto himself,which the professor attributes to Holmes, at least in making law. To quote Barnard, "Our English law never appeared in its strength until after the reformation; until after it had come in contact with a free Bible; until it had been softened, subdued and leavened by Bible teaching and Bible precepts, and, by these unmanacled from many of its glaring absurdities and heathenisms and unjust distinctions and inhuman punishments. It was not until then that civil liberty was reinstated after the downfall of the Jewish theocracy." Even before the reformation, the common law rule against torture was, as the professor suggests, a bulwark against inquisition. It furnished a response to Hobbes by way of CJ Hales' apology, and a substantial contribution to our constitutions without sacrificing the comity put forward by CJ Marshall in his Ogden dissent which denotes more a response to condition than a fear of destruction . Perhaps the professor's greatest contribution is his outline of a common law framework in dealing with the present problems of church-state relations and the like. Curiously, there is no mention of the Common law's traditional separation from the province of equity in Chancery - a benchmark for the separation of Church and State, reflected in the 1st Amendment, and hardly liberal in the sense the professor opines. All in all, Common Law Liberty represents a fine contribution to the emerging debate over fundamentals, which has pitted even those who believe in a "working" constitution beyond dead letter against those who have preached a "living constitution" of special interest.