Sociální struktura a právní postavení obyvatelstva v raném koloniálním období v Massachusetts (Příspěvek к dějinám státu a práva USA)

In his article “Social Structure and Legal Status of the Population in the Early Colonial Period in Massachusetts” the author discusses a number of problems. In Part I paying attention to the analysis of the historical type of the colonial society in Massachusetts he comes to the conclusion that in the Colony developed gradually a bourgeois type society bearing – notwithstanding its lack of maturity and the different historical conditions (it was a free colony in the economical sense) – the typical features of a society in the early period of the development of capitalism. In Part II he shows the fundamental division of the society into those who were free and those who were not. From the fundamental division follows yet a further division: a) of the free colonists into colonists enjoying full political rights (freemen) and colonists with restricted political rights (non-freemen); b) of the non-free colonists into non-free workers or servants and slaves. In Part III basic human rights are dealt with. Starting, in particular, from an analysis of the Body of Liberties of 1641 the author shows that the basic human rights were the result of the political struggle between the masses of colonists and the ruling “aristocratic” group. The rights were influenced by the economical, social and political conditions in the Colony, by the relationship between the Colony and the mother-country as well as by the revolution taking place in England. The formulation of the basic human rights recalls, according to the author, the provisions of the English freedom charters and statutes. But the Massachusetts legislators imprinted them with a new political and class content, aiming at the development and strengthening of a society of another historical type, of a bourgeois society. In Part IV on the legal status of the individual groups of the free population, i.e., of the colonists enjoying full political rights (freemen) and the colonists denied full political rights (non-freemen), the author points out the differences between the two groups. He demonstrates that the legal status of the two groups, equal in principle with respect to civil legal capacity and with respect to the basic human rights accorded, differed considerably as far as the extent of the political rights granted to them was concerned. The legal system of the Colony at first accorded political rights just to colonists enjoying full political rights (freemen) to extend them only later partly to free colonists with restricted political rights (non-freemen). In Part V the author analyses the legal status of the non-free components of the population, of the non-free workers and slaves, both from the aspect of legal capacity and from that of political rights. In the final Part VI the status of aliens is discussed by the author. He concludes that though the legal system safeguards some of their rights, the ruling leaves gaps, not providing a complete picture of the status of the aliens in the Colony.