The Virginia Law Reporters Before 1880
Abstract
Who or what was meant by Gratt., Hen. & M., Gilm., and the other references to the older Virginia legal authorities? A cursory investigation revealed that the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century law reporters, whose reports bear their own names, include in their number men of the highest political and legal visibility, such as Thomas Jefferson and George Wythe, as well as persons who are very little known. This series of biographical sketches of the Virginia law reporters whose publications are cited by their own names, is organized according to the older custom. This volume brings together through their common interest in law reporting a colonial attorney general, the first law professor in America, a president of the United States, a United States attorney general, a United States Supreme Court justice, many Virginia and federal politicians, Virginia judges, legal scholars, court clerks, a preacher, and a poet. These sketches are arranged according to the order of the official series of Virginia Reports with those of the compilers of the miscellaneous reports following in chronological order.