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One of the most distinguished men elected to be a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, George Wythe would must likely have exerted a considerable influence on the drafting of the constitution had he not been callled away from Philadelphia by illness in his family. Present in the great convention for only a few days, but present in spirit through his effect on two generations on political thought in Virginia. The unquestioned leader on the bar in his state. A man of spotless reputation callled by many the "the American Aristides." Devoted to the position that "not men but laws should be sovereign." An embodiment of the nomocratic, constumary, and prescriptive positon in England as it survived on these shores.During the years of conflict of British authority which preceded the outbreak of the Revolution, George Wythe rose to be one of the two or three most respected members of the Virginia bar and a leader in the state legislature. Apart from the practice of his profession, Wythe found time to devote to learning sought for its own sake, and for the training of young men such as Thomas Jefferson in the mysteries of the English legal tradition, "from doomsday down."
In 1778, Wythe became one of the three original judges of the high court of Chancery and in 1779, Professor of Law and Police at William and Mary, the first American to hold such a position and the second or third in the English speaking world. As professor, Wythe literaly created a academic disapline, initiating such proceedures as moot courts and mock legislatures which supplemented his more conventional lectures nand tutorials. Wythe trained the first formerly educated lawyers in our history --among them John Marshall, James Monroe, and Henery Clay -- and gave to the entire sourthern bar a lasting impetus and direction. At the Great Convention at Philadelphia, he drew up the rules which governored its operations. [Before being called home due to sickness in the family]. But, he had a larger role to play in Virginia's pivotal ratification convention. Much of the time during these deliberations, Wythe was called upon to chair a committee of the whole. But, on June 24, Wythe stepped aside from that post of honor and moved for the adoption of the proposed constitution with recommened amendments attached. Wythe, on his own part, submitted a list of corrective alterations, an act which led the distguished legal historian, Charles Warren, to described him as "the father of the Bill of Rights."
Wythe's plea for the Constitution of 1787, was in keeping with his authority as master of the ancient law. Liberty, he argued, cannot exist outside of society. "Experience is the best guide."
A Worthy Company. Brief Lives of the Framers of the Constitution. M. E. Bradford.
When love makes the highest sacrifice - George Wythe, "victim" of love
Namesake: Professor Bob Shepherd - University of Richmond
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Legal education as a part of a college's or university's curriculum in the common law can be traced on the two sides of the Atlantic to the establishment of the Vinerian Chair at Oxford and the creation of the first law professorship at the College of William and May. William Blackstone was the first occupant of the Vinerian Chair, which was created in 1758, in which capacity he delivered the series of lectures which formed the basis of his famous Commentaries, published between 1765 and 1769. It was shortly thereafter, in 1779, that George Wythe was named professor of law at William and Mary, the first such professorship in America. Wythe had played no small part in public events of the formative years before and after the Declaration of Independence. At the time of the Stamp Act, as a member of the House of Burgesses he had served on the committee appointed to draft the House's remonstrances against that statute. He had served in the Continental Congress and had signed the Declaration of Independence. In 1776, he worked with Thomas Jefferson and Edmond Pendleton to revise the laws of Virginia, at the instance of the General Assembly. Few men of his days were better steeped in the traditons of the ancient rights of Englishmen or the developing liberties of Americans. It is not surprising that, of all public achievments, he is best remembered as a teacher of law when one considers that Jefferson (who as Governor was responsible for Wythe's appointment to the chair of law) had studied law in Wythe's law office, that among Wythe's pupils at William and May was the future Chief Justice, John Marshall, and that later after Wythe moved to Richmond he had as a pupil Henry Clay. The Road From Runnymede: Magna Carta and Constitionalism in America. A.E. Dick Howard. The University of Virginia Press, 1968. |
