The Study of Legal Biography

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Webster was brought from Boston to

addressed to William the Fourth, re

argue the case against Horace Binney.

citing the fact that, as King's Counsel,

John Marshall's decision —he being

he owed allegiance to the Crown, but as it was the desire of the Earl of

then dead —was cited as conclusive authority against the maintenance of the trust; Mr. Binney, through an ample knowledge of the history of chancery —

Cadogan to have the services of Scar

strong on many sides—was able to

lett in his defense, he petitioned the monarch most graciously to dispense with his services so that he might serve the Earl, and His Majesty responded that he was so “graciously inclined."

satisfy Mr. Justice Story, not only of

The King waived his right and expressly

a branch in which John Marshall was not particularly versed though he was

his own original error but of the error

licensed his counsel to defend the prisoner,

of Chief Justice Marshall in misreading a certain ancient precedent as to which

and the document, signed by William

there were four conflicting reports in the books, three of which were absolutely

the Fourth and attested by Sir Robert Peel, I have in my possession. I have also the original recognizance, in the

unreliable.

handwriting of John Marshall, holding

I mention this as an in

stance, showing how sometimes, right at the very basis of a great department of jurisprudence, the wholesome growth

Aaron Burr to bail on his trial for treason. I have letters written by the

Justices of the Supreme Court of the

of a doctrine may be checked and per

United States, the early Justices I mean,

haps buried for a time, or utterly de

like James Wilson of Pennsylvania and John Blair of Virginia, addressed to President Washington thanking him for the positions which have been conferred, and one addressed to the Governor of

stroyed; and its rescue is due to some man having studied the very roots and foundations of the profession, and learned to estimate at their true worth and

value the reporters who have trans mitted the decisions of courts for our guidance. Take, too, an illustration which occurs to me just at this moment. I never knew how it was that an English coun

Virginia resigning the Chancellorship in order to take a seat among the federal judiciary. Without attempting to weary you with detail, or pointing out specific instances of this or the other aspect, I simply indicate that here is a branch of

sel who had been promoted from stuff to silk and had been made King's Coun

much neglected study which, if properly pursued —I mean earnestly and syste

sel, could defend a prisoner at the bar

matically pursued-—so as to become

against the Attorney-General, the true allegiance of the King's Counsel being to the Crown. I could find no explana

saturated with a personal knowledge of

tion of it in the books. Nobody seemed to have considered the matter, until there happened to come into my posses sion a document addressed to Sir James Scarlett, afterwards Lord Abinger, the most successful verdict-getter England

ever saw, which explained the whole matter. It was a petition on the part of Scarlett, one of the King's Counsel,

these men, of how their work came into conflict with the work of other men, of how their ambitions clashed in the great

questions that they argued, will invest the leading cases with an atmosphere which makes them living forces in the development of jurisprudence, instead of mere dead dry bones of the law buried in the charnel houses of books —mere annals or calendars of a bygone age. Now, what can be done with regard