Remaking Custom: Law and Identity in the Early American Republic

Notes

Notes Abbreviations UVA Alderman Library, University of Virginia EGS Earl Gregg Swem Library, College of William and Mary LHS Litchfield Historical Society LOC Library of Congress UCSC University of Connecticut Special Collections VHS Virginia Historical Society YLS Yale Law School Introduction 1. Kent, Commentaries on American Law, 3:125n (italics in original). All citations are to the first edition of Kent’s Commentaries unless otherwise indicated. 2. For more information on the development of law education in the colonial, Revolutionary , and early national periods, see Chroust, The Rise of the Legal Profession in America. See also Bryson, Legal Education in Virginia; Carrington, “The Revolutionary Idea of University Legal Education”; Reed, Training for the Public Profession of the Law; McKirdy, “The Lawyer as Apprentice.” 3. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England. For a discussion of Blackstone’s importance to English and Anglo-American law, see Boorstin, The Mysterious Science of the Law; Lieberman, The Province of Legislation Determined; Kennedy, “The Structure of Blackstone ’s Commentaries”; Lockmiller, Sir William Blackstone; Warden, The Life of Blackstone; Doolittle, “Sir William Blackstone and His Commentaries on the Laws of England”; and Watson , “The Structure of Blackstone’s Commentaries.” 4. “Of the Study of the Law,” in The Works of James Wilson, 80; Hugh Blair Grigsby Diary , October 6, 1828, Grigsby Papers, VHS; Hoffman, A Lecture Introductory to a Course of Lectures, 27. 5. Kent to Thomas Washington, October 6, 1828, James Kent Papers, LOC. 6. James Iredell to Francis Iredell Sr., July 31, 1771, The Papers of James Iredell, 1:74. 7. For more on Tucker’s life and career, see Hamilton, The Making and Unmaking of a 202 | Notes to Pages 4–8 Revolutionary Family; and Cullen, St. George Tucker and the Discipline of Law in Jeffersonian Virginia. 8. St. George Tucker, Blackstone’s Commentaries. 9. Conrad, “Metaphor and Imagination in James Wilson’s Theory of the Federal Union”; Kermit L. Hall, The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, 932–33; McCloskey , Introduction to Wilson, in The Works of James Wilson, 59–65. 10. Tapping Reeve, The Law of Baron and Femme; Reeve, A Treatise on the Law of Descents in the Several States of America. Little has been written about Reeve, his protégé and partner James Gould, or the Litchfield Law School. The most comprehensive work is McKenna, Tapping Reeve and the Litchfield Law School. See also Fisher, “The Litchfield Law School”; Goetsch, “The Litchfield Law School”; Herbert S. Jones, “America’s First Law School,” 2–7. 11. Swift, A System of the Laws of the State of Connecticut; Henry St. George Tucker, Commentaries on the Laws of Virginia. 12. Brackenridge, Law Miscellanies; Brackenridge, Considerations on the Jurisprudence of the State of Pennsylvania; DuPonceau, A Discourse on the Early History of Pennsylvania; DuPonceau , A Dissertation on the Nature and Extent of the Jurisdiction of the Courts of the United States. 13. Chipman, Sketches of the Principles of Government; Chipman, Reports and Dissertations in Two Parts. 14. Grimké, The Duties of Executors and Administrators; Grimké, The Public Laws of the State of South Carolina. 15. Sullivan, History of Land Titles in Massachusetts. 16. Hoffman, A Course of Legal Study; Hoffman, A Lecture Introductory to a Course of Lectures ; Hoffman, An Address to Students of Law; Hoffman, A Syllabus of a Course of Lectures on Law; Hoffman, A Lecture Being the Second of a Series. 17. The only full-length biography of Kent is Horton, James Kent. Perry Miller pays considerable attention to Kent in his The Life of the Mind in America, especially 105–55. More recent work on Kent includes Raack, “‘To Preserve the Best Fruits’”; and Stychin, “The Commentaries of Chancellor James Kent.” 18. St. George Tucker refers to his correspondence with Jeremy Belknap and Zephaniah Swift in “On the State of Slavery in Virginia” (see St. George Tucker, Blackstone’s Commentaries , 2:A54). Tucker’s five-volume edition entitled Blackstone’s Commentaries reproduces Blackstone’s original Commentaries in the main text and includes Tucker’s “notes” on Blackstone in the extensive appendixes, which are designated using letters, as in “Note A,” “Note B,” etc. The appendixes are through-numbered, beginning with page 1. In order to distinguish page numbers in the main text from those in Tucker’s appendixes, here and elsewhere I have used the prefix “A,” to indicate that the page cited is an appendix page number. 19. Davis’s Executors v. Fulton et. als., 2 Tenn. 111 (1805). In his remarks, the...