An Essay on the Trial by Jury is an excellent treatise on the reason we have the jury system available as a right within the Anglo-Saxon justice system and an excellent point of beginning for the study of Constitutional and Common Law. Lysander Spooner was an American individualist anarchist, entrepreneur, libertarian, political philosopher, abolitionist, supporter of the labor movement, and legal theorist of the nineteenth century. He is also known for competing with the U.S. Post Office with his American Letter Mail Company, which was forced out of business by the United States government. His activism began with his career as a lawyer, which itself violated Massachusetts law. Spooner had studied law under the prominent lawyers and politicians John Davis and Charles Allen, but he had never attended college. According to the laws of the state, college graduates were required to study with an attorney for three years, while non-graduates were required to do so for five years.