Colonial charters prompted new ways of thinking about constitutionalism, jurisdiction, and imperialism. Explaining this requires engagement with a series of micro-incidents across several hundred years of legal history. The evolution of written legalism is hereby explored from the European High Middle Ages to the early American Republican period. The article begins from the basic and uncontroversial premise that charters were valid only within the realm of a prince or overlord endorsing its issuance in the first place. If charters, like sundry other documents designed to advertise the donation or transferral of some privilege, were specific to particular jurisdictions and subjects in medieval legal history, what changed during the ‘age of discovery’? This article does not pretend to offer the definitive word on colonial charters, but rather exemplifies the kind of insights that are revealed by zooming out to appreciate legal and political change across the longue durée.

中文翻译：

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长期的宪章：从爱德华一世到首席大法官约翰马歇尔的欧洲和美国捐赠文件的流动性和适用性

殖民宪章激发了人们对宪政、管辖权和帝国主义的新思考方式。解释这一点需要涉及跨越数百年法律历史的一系列微观事件。在此探讨了从欧洲中世纪到美国共和党早期的书面律法主义的演变。这篇文章从一个基本且无争议的前提开始，即宪章仅在首先批准其发布的王子或霸主的领域内有效。如果宪章，像旨在宣传某些特权的捐赠或转让的各种其他文件一样，是特定于中世纪法律史上的特定司法管辖区和主题的，那么在“发现时代”期间发生了什么变化？这篇文章并不假装提供关于殖民宪章的明确说法，