Bouvie’s Law Dictionary and Institutes of American Law

Bouvier’s Law Dictionary and Institutes of American Law

Review of Bouvier’s Law Dictionary and “Institutes of American Law”

This review was written in “North American Review”(July, 1861) by S. Austin Allibone, author of “the Dictionary of Authors”

The author of these volumes taught lawyers by his books, but he taught all men by his example, and we should therefore greatly error if we failed to hold up, for the imitation of all, his successful warfare against early obstacles, his unconquerable zeal for the acquisition of knowledge, and his unsparing efforts to distribute the knowledge thus acquired for the benefit of his professional brethren.

Bouvier’s Biography

Note: See John Bouvier for a complementary biography

Torn in the village of Codognan, in the department Du Gard, in the south of France, in the year 1787, at the age of fifteen he accompanied his father and mother the last a member of the distinguished family of Benezet to Philadelphia, where he immediately applied himself to those exertions for his own support which the rapid diminution of his father’s large property had rendered
necessary. In 1812 he became a citizen of the United States, and about the same time removed to West Philadelphia, where he built a printing-office, which still exists as an honorable monument of his enterprise.

Two years later we find him settled at Brownsville, in the western part of Pennsylvania, where, in 1814, he commenced the publication of a weekly newspaper, entitled “The American Telegraph.”In 1818, on Mr. Bouvier’s removal to Uniontown, he united with it “The Genius of Liberty,”and thenceforth issued the two journals in one sheet, under the title of “The Genius of Liberty and American Telegraph.”He retained his connection with this periodical until July 18, 1820.

It was while busily engaged as editor and publisher that Mr. Bouvier resolved to commence the study of the law. He attacked Coke and Blackstone with the determination and energy which he carried into every department of action or speculation, and in 1818 he was admitted to practice in the Court of Common Pleas of Fayette county, Pennsylvania. During the September term of 1822 he was admitted as an Attorney of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, and in the following year he removed to Philadelphia, where he resided until his death.

In 1836 he was appointed by Governor Ritner Recorder of the City of Philadelphia, and in 1838 was commissioned by the same chief magistrate as an Associate Judge of the Court of Criminal Sessions. But the heavy draughts upon time and strength to which he was continually subjected had not been permitted to divert his mind from the cherished design of bestowing upon his profession a manual of which it had long stood in urgent need. While laboring as a student of law,
and even after his admission to the bar, he had found his efforts for advancement constantly obstructed, and often frustrated, by the want of a conveniently arranged digest of that legal information which every student should have, and which every practising lawyer must have, always ready for immediate use.

Foreign Dictionaries were insufficient

The English Law Dictionaries based upon the jurisprudence of another country , incorporating peculiarities of the feudal law, that are to a great extent obsolete even in England, only partially brought up to the revised code of Great Britain, and totally omitting the distinctive features of our own codes were manifestly insufficient for the wants of the American lawyer.

A Law Dictionary for the profession on this side of the Atlantic should present a faithful incorporation of the old with the new, of the spirit and the principles of the earlier codes, and the “newness of the letter”of modern statutes. The Mercantile Law, with the large body of exposition by which it has been recently illustrated ; the Law of Real Property in the new shape which, especially in America, it has latterly assumed ; the technical expressions scattered here and there throughout the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitutions and laws of the several States of the American Union, all these, and more than these, must be within the lawyer’s easy reach if he would be spared embarrassment, mortification, and decadence.

A work which should come up to this standard would indeed be an invaluable aid to the profession ; but what hope could be reasonably entertained that the requisites essential to its preparation the Learning , the zeal, the acumen to analyze, the judgment to synthesize, the necessary leisure, the, persevering industry, and the bodily strength to carry to successful execution would ever be combined in one man? Mr. Bouvier determined that it should not be his fault if such a
work was not at least honestly attempted. Bravely he wrought, month in and out, year in and out, rewarded for his self-denying toil by each well-executed article, and rejoicing, at rare and prized intervals, over a completed letter of the alphabet.

In 1839 the author had the satisfaction of presenting in two octavo volumes the results of his anxious toils to his brethren and the world at large; and the.approving verdict of the most eminent judges Judge Story and Chancellor Kent, for example assured him that he had “not labored in vain,”nor “spent his strength for naught.”This was well; but the author himself was the most rigid
and unsparing of his critics.

Contrary to the practice of many writers, considering the success of the first and second editions as a proper stimulus to additional accuracy, fulness, and completeness in every part, in 1848, when the third edition was called for, the second having been published in 1843, he was able to announce that he had not only “remodelled very many of the articles contained in the former editions,”but also had “added upwards of twelve hundred new ones.”He also presented the reader with “a very copious index to the whole, which, at the same time that it will assist the inquirer, will exhibit the great number of subjects treated of in these volumes.”

He still made collections on all sides for the benefit of future issues, and it was found after the death of the author, in 1851, that he had accumulated a large mass of valuable materials. These, with much new matter, were, by competent editorial care, incorporated into the text of the third edition, and the whole was issued as the fourth edition in 1852. The work had been subjected to a thorough revision, inaccuracies were eliminated, the various changes in the Constitutions
of several of the United States were noticed in their appropriate places, and under the head of “Maxims”alone thirteen hundred new articles were added.

That in the ensuing eight years six more editions were called for by the profession, is a tribute of so conclusive a character to the merits of the work that eulogy seems superfluous. Let us, then, briefly examine those features to which the great professicnal popularity of the Law Dictionary is to be attributed. Some of these, specified as desiderata, have been already referred to with sufficient par
ticularity. But it has been the aim of the author to cover a wider field than the one thus designated. He has included in his plan technical expressions relating to the legislative, executive, and judicial departments of the government; the political and the civil rights and duties of citizens ; the rights and duties of persons, especially such as are peculiar to the institutions of the United States,
for instance, the rights of descent and administration, the mode of acquiring and transferring property, and the criminal law and its administration.

He was persuaded and here as elsewhere he has correctly interpreted the wants of the profession that an occasional comparison of the civil, canon, and other systems of Foreign Law with our own would be eminently useful by way of illustration, as well as for other purposes too obvious to require recital. We will barely suggest the advantage to the student of civil law or canon law of having at hand a guide of this character. And we would express our hope that the student
of civil or of canon law is not hereafter to be that vara avis in the United States which, little to our credit, he has long been. He who would be thoroughly furnished for his high vocation will not be satisfied to slake his thirst for knowledge even at the streams (to which, alas ! few aspire) of Bracton, Britton, or Fleta; he will ascend rather to the fountains from which these drew their fertilizing supplies.

To suppose that he who draws up many thousands of definitions, and cites whole libraries of authorities, shall never err in the accuracy of statement or the relevancy of quotation, is to suppose such a combination of the best qualities of a Littleton, a Fearne, a Butler, and a Hargrave, as the world is not likely to behold while law-books are made and lawyers are needed.

If Chancellor Kent, after “running over almost every article in”the first edition (we quote his own language), was “deeply impressed with the evidence of the industry, skill, Learning , and judgment with’ which the work was completed,”and Judge Story expressed a like favorable verdict, the rest of us, legal and lay, may, without any unbecoming humiliation, accept their dicta as conclusive. We say legal and lay; for the lay reader will make a sad mistake if he supposes that a Law Dictionary, especially this Law Dictionary, is out of “his line and measure.”

On the contrary, the Law Dictionarv should stand on the same shelf with Sismondi’s Italian Republics, Robertson’s Charles the Fifth, Russell’s Modern Europe, Guizot’s Lectures, Hallam’s
Histories, Prescott’s Ferdinand and Isabella, and the records of every country in which the influences of the canon law, the civil law, and the feudal law, separately or jointly, moulded society, and made men, manners, and customs what they were, and, to no small extent, what they still are.

In common with the profession on both sides of the water, Judge Bouvier had doubtless often experienced inconvenience from the absence of an Index to Matthew Bacon’s New Abridgment of the Law. Not only was this defect an objection to that valuable compendium, but since the publication of the last edition there had been an accumulation of new matter which it was most desirable should be at the command of the law student, the practising lawyer, and the bench.

In 1841 Judge Bouvier was solicited to prepare a new edition, and undertook the arduous task. The revised work was presented to the public in ten royal octavo volumes, dating from 1842 to 1846. With the exception of one volume, edited by Judge Randall, and a part of another, edited by Mr. Robert E. Peterson. Judge Bouvier’s son-in-law, the whole of the labor, including the copious Index, fell upon the broad shoulders of Judge Bouvier.

This, the second American, was based upon the seventh English edition, prepared by Sir Henry Gwillim and Messrs. C. E. Dodd and William Blanshard, and published in eight royal octavos
in 1832. In the first three volumes Bouvier confines his Annotations to late American decisions; but in the remaining volumes he refers to recent English as well as to American Reports.

But this industrious scholar was to increase still further the obligations under which he had already laid the profession and the public. The preparation of a comprehensive yet systematic digest of American law had been for years a favorite object of contemplation to a mind which had long admired the analytical system of Pothier.

Unwearied by the daily returning duties of his office and the bench, and by the unceasing vigilance necessary to the incorporation into the text of his Law Dictionary of the results of recent trials and annual legislation, he laid the foundations of his “Institutes of American Law,”and perseveringly added block upon block, until, in the summer of 1851, he had the satisfaction of looking upon
a completed edifice. Lawyers who had hailed with satisfaction the success of his earlier labors, and those who had grown into reputation since the results of those labors were first given to the world, united their verdict in favor of this last work.

It is hardly necessary to remark that it was only by a carefully adjusted apportionment of his hours that Judge Bouvier was enabled to accomplish so large an amount of intellectual labor, in addition to that “which came upon him daily.”the still beginning, never ending, often vexatious duties connected with private legal practice and judicial deliberation. He rose every morning at from four to five o’clock, and worked in his library until seven or eight; then left his home for his office (where, in the intervals of business, he was employed on his “Law Dictionary” or “The Institutes”) or his seat on the bench, and after the labor of the day wrought in his library from five o’clock until an hour before midnight.

See Also

Conclusion

Notes

References and Further Reading

About the Author/s and Reviewer/s

Author: international

Mentioned in these Entries

Annotations, Attorney, Bouvier’s Law Dictionary and Concise Encyclopedia, 1914, Constitutions, Foreign Law, John Bouvier, Law Dictionaries, Learning, Maxims of Law, Mozley and Whiteley’s Law Dictionary, Osborn’s Concise Law Dictionary, country.

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