Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Court of Appeals of Virginia
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
Description of the Wolf Law Library's copy
View this book in William & Mary's online catalog.
External Links
References
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ William Winslow Crosskey, Politics and the Constitution in the History of the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 599-605.
- ↑ Ibid, 605.
- ↑ Ibid, 600.
- ↑ Ibid, 601.
- ↑ Ibid, 600.
- ↑ Ibid, 605.
