Difference between revisions of "John Louis Taylor"

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John Louis Taylor (1 March 1769 – 29 January 1829), was the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of North Carolina. Taylor was born in London to parents of Irish descent. He emigrated to America with his older brother, settling in Virginia.^[1] Taylor was able to attend the College of William & Mary for a short time, sometime between 1785 and 1788. His education is described as "classical," but the dates place him at the College at the same time George Wythe was teaching law (before 1789). Taylor left without taking a degree and moved to Fayetteville, North Carolina where he studied law on his own, and was admitted to the bar in 1788.^[2]

Orr v. Irwin (1816)

In his decision for Orr's Heirs v. Irwin's Heirs and Devisees (2 Law Repos. [4 N. Car.] 465), Chief Justice Taylor quotes at length from one of George Wythe's cases, Farley v. Shippen (1794), citing cases from A General Abridgment of Cases in Equity, Vernon's Reports, Atkyns, and Vesey, and then prefaces his extracts of Wythe:

To these cases may be added a decision made by the late Chancellor Wythe, in Virginia, which may be cited as equal in point of authority, if not superior, to any of the British decisions, from the luminous and conclusive reasoning on which that upright and truly estimable judge founds it.

Clarum & venerabile nomen.^[3]

Taylor's extracts of Farley v. Shippen continues for three pages, and he concludes by saying:

We have transcribed thus largely from the work of the Chancellor, because it is not in every library, and the discussion of the question, which is new in this court, being the most able and copious we have anywhere met with, cannot fail to be instructive to the student, and acceptable to the practitioner, who will both be disposed to allow that the excellence of the matter atones for the length of the extract.

Taylor's effusions for Wythe were used in advertisements for the second edition of Wythe's Reports in 1852, by the publisher J. Randolph of Richmond, Virginia.

See also

• Wythe the Teacher

References

1. ↑ Max R. Williams, "Taylor, John Louis," American National Biography Online, accessed January 30, 2018.
2. ↑ Gertrude S. Carraway, "John Louis Taylor," Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, vol. 6, William S. Powell, ed. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). Available at NCpedia, accessed January 30, 2018.
3. ↑ "Illustrious and venerable name."

Further reading

• William H. Battle, "Memoir of John Louis Taylor, the First Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina," North Carolina University Magazine 9, no. 7 (March 1860): 385–94.
• John Louis Taylor, Cases Determined in the Superior Courts of Law and Equity of the State of North Carolina (Newbern, NC: Martin and Ogden, 1802).
• John Louis Taylor, A Digest of the Statute Law of North-Carolina, Relative to Wills, Executors and Administrators, the Provision for Widows, and the Distribution of Intestates Estates (Raleigh, NC: J. Gales & Son, 1824).

External links

• Elmwood, North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office.
• John Louis Taylor, Find a Grave.