136
Souter, J., dissenting
ment the only difficulty; according to Dean Pound, "[s]ocial and geographical conditions contributed also to make the work of receiving and reshaping the common law exceptionally difficult." Pound, supra, at 7.
The consequence of this anti-English hostility and awareness of changed circumstances was that the independent States continued the colonists' practice of adopting only so much of the common law as they thought applicable to their local conditions.33 As Justice Story explained, "[t]he com-used the term common law to mean the great rights associated with due process"). The cardinal principles of this common-law vision were parliamentary supremacy and the rule of law, conceived as the axiom that "all members of society, government officials as well as private persons, are equally responsible to the law and . . . 'equally amenable to the jurisdiction of ordinary tribunals.' " Jones 128-129 (quoting A. Dicey, Introduction to Study of the Law of Constitution 192 (9th ed. 1939)). It is hard to imagine that the doctrine of sovereign immunity, so profoundly at odds with both these cardinal principles, could have been imported to America as part of this more generalized common-law vision.
33 See, e. g., Conner v. Shepherd, 15 Mass. 164 (1818) (rejecting English common-law rule regarding assignment of dower rights as inapplicable to the state and condition of land in Massachusetts); Parker & Edgarton v. Foote, 19 Wend. 309, 318 (N. Y. 1838) (rejecting English rule entitling a landowner to damages for the stopping of his lights; the court noted that "[i]t cannot be necessary to cite cases to prove that those portions of the common law of England which are hostile to the spirit of our institutions, or which are not adapted to the existing state of things in this country, form no part of our law"); Fitch v. Brainerd, 2 Conn. 163, 189 (1805) (accepting English common-law rule barring married woman from disposing of her real estate by will, and observing that "it long since became necessary . . . to make [the English common law] our own, by practical adoption—with such exceptions as a diversity of circumstances, and the incipient customs of our own country, required") (emphasis in original); Martin v. Bigelow, 2 Aiken 184 (Vt. 1827) (declaring English common law as to stream rights inappropriate for conditions of Vermont waterways); Hall v. Smith, 1 Bay 330, 331 (S. C. Sup. Ct. 1793) (refusing to apply strict English rules regarding promissory notes as unsuited to the "local situation of Carolina"). See also Hall, supra, at 805 ("[A] review of the cases shows that no matter what the wording of the reception statute or constitutional provision of the particular state, the rule developed, which was
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