When compared to the experience of Illinois, the story of antebellum Virginia law is the story of what did not happen, and why. At the point of intersection between law and politics, the conflictual relationship between the different parts of the state translated into the complete rejection of the emerging system of American common law. As before, the explanation lies in the interaction of ideology, interests, and institutions. In its political philosophy, Virginia's elite adamantly rejected the appeal to an expanded and abstract concept of salus populi and the ideal of standardization; in its political economy, Virginia was dominated by an established set of interests opposed to the transformative power of railroad expansion, independent capital markets, and the growth of interstate trade; and in its courts, where Illinois' highest judges had imposed change on a professional core of lawyers frequently slow to catch on, the justices of Virginia's Supreme Court made it their role to resist pressures from below to modernize the state's legal doctrines.

There were significant similarities between Illinois and Virginia in the 1850s. Both states, for example, could be divided into three sections, and in both cases those geographical divisions defined the lines of political conflict. Rather than being divided north to south, however, Virginia was divided east to west, between the western Trans-Allegheny (itself separable into the northwest and southwest regions on the basis of patterns in settlement and economic activity), the central Shenandoah Valley region, and the eastern region comprising the Tidewater and Piedmont.