THE ORIGIN OF THE APPEAL IN AMERICA

The appeal has been treated by academics as a mere legal procedure, po ssessing no particular significance. Indeed, for many years, legal sch olars accepted the influential arguments of Professors Julius Goebel a nd Roscoe Pound that the appearance of the appeal in early American co urts arose either from confusion about English common law legal proced ures or was the result of colonial adaptation of English justice-of-th e-peace practices. Professor Bilder challenges this conventional expla nation of the origin of the appeal by locating the early American colo nists within a transatlantic Western European legal culture. Professor Bilder's Article draws on recent work in cultural history to propose the idea of a ''culture of appeal'' in early America. Exploring the la rger set of meanings and practices surrounding the word ''appeal,'' sh e argues that the culture of appeal developed from legal, religious, p olitical, and literary ideas in England before the 1630s. In particula r, Professor Bilder argues that the appeal arose outside of the common law. She demonstrates that the appeal carried with it a belief in the importance of equity and a debate about the location of supreme autho rity. The Article traces the culture of appeal as it journeyed into Ma ssachusetts and Rhode Island in the 1640s and reveals that these meani ngs were accepted and embraced by the early colonists. Professor Bilde r concludes that the presence of the appeal in American law represents something far greater than Goebel's or Pound's interpretation of it a s a mere common law procedure; she suggests that the appeal signifies a deep cultural concern for a system of equitable justice.