Originally published by the Macmillan Company in 1960, this book is intended as an introduction to the history of Massachusetts law in the colonial period, 1630o1650. This volume first traces the evolution of the colony's institutions and instruments of government and, second, describes in broad outline certain aspects of the substantive law that developed in these first two decades.

Foundations of Power: John Marshall, 1801-1815 is the second volume of the Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise History of the Supreme Court of the United States. The volume covers the beginnings of the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall and surveys the first fourteen years of John Marshall's tenure. The authors describe the judicial business transacted by the chief justice and the ten Associate Justices with whom he served during those years. They argue that John Marshall's great accomplishment as Chief Justice was to establish the rule of law as the basis of the Supreme Court's jurisprudence. The book chronicles how, by becoming 'a bulwark of an identifiable rule of law as distinct from the accommodations of politics', the relatively feeble institution of the 1790s moved toward the authoritative Marshall Court of 1819.