Wythe's Judicial Career

From Wythepedia: The George Wythe Encyclopedia
Revision as of 11:21, 22 February 2018 by Lktesar (talk | contribs) (→‎Chancery court cases)

Jump to: navigation, search

In 1778, Wythe was appointed to the newly created High Court of Chancery. Beverly Tucker describes the choice of Wythe as a judge:

... the people were not wholly insensible of the want of a Court of somewhat different character; and to supply that want was one of the objects, to which the framers of the new Constitution directed their attention. To do this, they established three Courts, for which sixteen Judges learned in the law were wanting. The difficulty was to find the men fit to fill these important posts. Integrity and talent were abundant, but a learned lawyer was indeed a rara avis. What motive had the lawyers had to acquire learning? With the exception of some few who had studied the profession abroad, and had not been long enough in Virginia to lose the memory of what they knew, in the loose practice prevailing here, there was but one man in the State who had any claims to the character. I speak of the venerable Chancellor Wythe, a man who differed from his contemporaries in this, because in his ordinary motives and modes of action he differed altogether from other men. Without ambition, without avarice, taking no pleasure in society, he was by nature and habit addicted to solitude, and his active mind found its only enjoyment in profound research. The languages of antiquity, the exact sciences, and the law, were the three studies which alone could be pursued with a reasonable hope of arriving at that certainty which his upright and truth-loving mind contemplated as the only object worthy of his labors. To these he devoted himself, and he became a profound lawyer for the same reason that he was a profound Greek scholar, astronomer and mathematician.[1]

Wythe frequently cited Greek and Latin classics in his case decisions in addition to other non-legal titles.

County court cases

Cases published by Wythe

Wythe compiled a book of his Chancery Court cases, now known as Wythe's Reports.[2] Several decades after Wythe died, Benjamin Blake Minor edited a second edition of the Reports that added decisions Wythe published separately.[3]

The Reports contain cases that Wythe heard as Virginia's High Chancellor, the judge who sat on the commonwealth's High Court of Chancery, a court of equity. In the Anglo-American legal system, equity developed as an alternative set of remedies to the common law system; equity was supposed to provide a soultion when the common law outcome would not provide proper justice. In the early days of the United States, many states had separate courts to hear equity cases. Equity cases usually involved property, contract, and inheritance disputes, so those are the cases the reader will find in Wythe's Reports. Wythepedia has created pages for each of the decisions in the Reports summarizing the case and its background and explaining references to sources Wythe cited. We can think of Wythe's Reports as his version of a casebook, the textbooks that modern law students are familiar with. Wythe excerpts and summarizes the court's decisions, sometimes including subsequent appeals to other courts, then comments on them. Wythe hopes that by reading his commentaries on the courts' decisions, future lawyers and students of law will reach a better understanding of the law as it was in Virginia and how he thought it should be.

Wythe's Reports demands a lot from its readers. Wythe frequently cited or alluded to Ancient Greek and Latin works (often in their original language, with no English translation), as well as more recent classic authors such as Cervantes, Dante, and Shakespeare. He frequently used shorthand references and terms of art that lawyers of his era would understand, but which 21st-century readers may find baffling. Wythe frequently left out information such as how the case arrived before him or facts that Wythe found irrelevant to the point he was trying to make. Often, if a Wythe decision was appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, that higher court's opinion would be a better source for the facts of the case.

Properly understanding Wythe's decisions also means knowing their historical context. Many of the cases Wythe decided were influenced by events that were familiar to educated people in his day, but are esoteric history to modern Americans. Wythe also believed that Roman law principles were sometimes superior to English legal precedent, and cautioned against blindly following England's caselaw. Wythe believed, as did many of his contemporaries, that as a new country, the United States might wish to follow European-style civil law principles rather than Anglo common law.[4]

Another important piece of subtext lurking within Wythe's Reports is its author's long rivalry with Edmund Pendleton, President of the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. Wythe had arguably the most brilliant jurisprudential mind of his generation, and he was rarely defeated when he argued a case. The gregarious Pendleton, however, was a master litigator and one of the few people capable of defeating Wythe in court. As President of the Supreme Court, Pendleton reversed a substantial number of Wythe's decisions.

Wythepedia articles on the cases in Wythe's Reports summarize the case, and include notes and links to useful articles that can better explain the conflict and reasoning in the case. Wythepedia also includes articles that fill in the background behind a number of these decisions. Wythe's Reports can be a treatise on Virginia law and equity, a snapshot of life in Virginia during the late 18th century, and a profile of one of this nation's most underappreciated Founders.

Cases from Virginia Reports

Court of Appeals cases

See also

References

  1. ↑ Beverly Tucker, The Principles of Pleading, (Boston: Charles C. Little & James Brown, 1846), 56.
  2. ↑ George Wythe, Decisions of Cases in Virginia by the High Court of Chancery (Richmond: Printed by Thomas Nicolson, 1795).
  3. ↑ George Wythe, Decisions of Cases in Virginia by the High Court of Chancery with Remarks upon Decrees by the Court of Appeals, Reversing Some of Those Decisions|Decisions of Cases in Virginia by the High Court of Chancery, 2nd ed., ed. B.B. Minor (Richmond: J.W. Randolph, 1852).
  4. ↑ Timothy G. Kearley, "From Rome to the Restatement", Law Library Journal 108(1) (Winter 2016): 60.

Further reading

  • Bryson, W. Hamilton. "The Use of Roman Law in Virginia Courts." In American Journal of Legal History 28 (1984): 135-146.
  • Hoffman, Richard J. "Classics in the Courts of the United States, 1790-1800." In American Journal of Legal History 55 (1978): 55-84.
  • Holt, Wythe. "George Wythe: Early Modern Judge." In Alabama Law Review 58, no. 5 (2007): 1009-1039.

External links

Retrieved from "http://lawlibrary.wm.edu/wythepedia/index.php?title=Wythe%27s_Judicial_Career&oldid=63092"