Assertions are made that the traditional categories used to interpret legal change in this period, such as, constitutionalism, liberalism, and instrumentalism, have blinded us to an extraordinary legal and political discourse that imposes antebellum legal decisions on private rights and public regulations. This concept has been labeled "the common law vision of a well-regulated society." It focuses on man as a social being in society on the pragmatic, historical, methodology that is enshrined in a dynamic, pre-Enlightenment conception of the common law, and with the overall concern that the public happiness be determined through a well-regulated society. (Author abstract modified)