Difference between revisions of "Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Court of Appeals of Virginia"

Revision as of 21:41, 4 March 2014

by Bushrod Washington

Bushrod Washington (1762-1829), the nephew of George Washington, is most well-known for his tenure on the United States Supreme Court from 1798 until his death in 1829.^[1] After studying law under George Wythe at the College of William and Mary in 1780, he began a long career in politics and law.^[2] In the 1790s, he established a practice in Richmond. During this decade, he regularly appeared before the Virginia Court of Appeals.^[3] He also served as a reporter for the court, and the notes he made of the cases he observed eventually became the basis for his Reports of Cases Argued in the Virginia Court of Appeals.^[4]

At the time that Washington published his Reports in 1823, the recording and collecting of written summaries of court cases in the States was still a fairly new practice.^[5] No equivalent reports yet existed in Georgia, Delaware, or Rhode Island, and the practice in several other States was less than 20 years old.^[6] Without published records of judicial opinions and the reasoning behind them, a common law could not exist.^[7] Judges had no reference to precedent. Instead, they had to rely on English common law, the authority of which was questionable in the United States,^[8] or their own transient memory.^[9] Even recorded decisions were of little use unless they were collected in a reporter like Washington’s: a State’s records were often scattered throughout that State, making any attempt to search through prior cases nearly impossible.^[10]

Bibliographic Information

Author: Bushrod Washington

Title: Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Court of Appeals of Virginia

Published: Richmond: Printed by Thomas Nicolson, 1798-1799.

Edition:

Evidence for Inclusion in Wythe's Library

Listed in the Jefferson Inventory of Wythe's Library as "Washington reports. 2.v. 8vo." and kept by Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson later sold a copy of the first edition of Washington's Reports to the Library of Congress in 1815, but the volumes have been rebound and contain no evidence to conclusively verify Wythe's previous ownership.^[11] Both the Brown Bibliography^[12] and George Wythe's Library^[13] on LibraryThing list the first edition (1798-1799) of this title and acknowledge that the Library of Congress may own Wythe's copy. Brown also notes that Jefferson owned a second copy which was sold after his death. The Wolf Law Library followed their recommendations and purchased a copy of Washington's Reports.

Description of the Wolf Law Library's copy

View this book in William & Mary's online catalog.

External Links

Google Books.

References

1. ↑ The Oyez Project at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law, s.v. Bushrod Washington," accessed October 11, 2013, http://www.oyez.org/justices/bushrod_washington.
2. ↑ Timothy L. Hall, “Washington, Bushrod” in Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical Dictionary (New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2001), U.S. Government Online, Facts On File, Inc., accessed 11 October 2013, http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?p=details.aspx&ItemID=WE36&iPin=SCJ012&SingleRecord=True.
3. ↑ Ibid.
4. ↑ Ibid.
5. ↑ William Winslow Crosskey, Politics and the Constitution in the History of the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 599-605.
6. ↑ Ibid, 605.
7. ↑ Ibid, 600.
8. ↑ Ibid, 601.
9. ↑ Ibid, 600.
10. ↑ Ibid, 605.
11. ↑ E. Millicent Sowerby, Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, 2nd ed. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983), 2:353 [no.2090].
12. ↑ Bennie Brown, "The Library of George Wythe of Williamsburg and Richmond," (unpublished manuscript, May, 2012) Microsoft Word file. Earlier edition available at: https://digitalarchive.wm.edu/handle/10288/13433
13. ↑ LibraryThing, s. v. "Member: George Wythe" accessed on March 4, 2014.