Upon publication The Law Quarterly Review praised this book, noting that "great learning is manifest in these pages" (cited in Marke). McIlwain [1871-1968] examines of the rise of constitutionalism from the "democratic strands" in the works of Aristotle and Cicero through the transitional moment between the medieval and the modern eras. He concludes with a discussion of the forces of despotism that were threatening constitutionally based individual freedom in the 1930s. One of the twentieth century's most distinguished scholars of Anglo-American constitutional history, McIlwain was Eaton Professor of the Science of Government in Harvard University and the author of The High Court of Parliament and Its Supremacy (1910) and The American Revolution: A Constitutional Interpretation (1924).-Print ed.