Tapping Reeve

Tapping Reeve ( born October 1, 1744 Brookhaven, Long Iceland, † December 13, 1823 in Litchfield, Connecticut ) was one of the most important American jurist of the early Republic. In 1784 he founded one of the first law schools in the United States.

Life

Reeve studied at the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University ( AB 1763), where he taught until 1770 also 1767. At this time he was also a private tutor of the later U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr and his sister Sally Burr, whom he married in 1771.

In 1772, he moved to Litchfield in Connecticut, where he opened a law office. 1784 Reeve opened a private law school there, where he trained prospective lawyers in the classroom. Until well into the 19th century learned prospective lawyers in the United States their trade mostly in private training contracts at lawyers or judges. It was not until 1779 the first university chair of jurisprudence was founded at the College of William & Mary, Reeves device was therefore only the second specialized law school of the young nation. As Reeve was appointed in 1798 as a judge of the Connecticut Supreme Court, he put to recieve the teaching upright, in addition James Gould and later more lawyers than teachers, but also taught himself even into old age. Among the approximately 1000 lawyers who have studied over the years in Reeve, there is a large number of prominent politicians, as John C. Calhoun and Noah Webster, a total of 16 future senators, ten governors and two judges of the Supreme Court of the United States.

From 1798 Reeve was a judge at the Superior Court of Connecticut and moved in 1814 to the Supreme Judge of that State.

Works

• The Law of Baron and Femme, of Parent and Child, Guardian and Ward, Master and Servant, and of the Powers of Courts of Chancery in with Essay on the Terms Heir, Heirs, and Heirs of the Body (1816 )
• Treatise on the Law of Descents in the Several United States of America ( 1825).