A History of the 90Th Division - Primary Source Edition
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
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George Wythe was an American law professor, classics scholar and judge.
Background
George Wythe was born in 1726, at Chesterville Plantation Site, Virginia, British America (now United States), the second of three children of Thomas Wythe, lll and Margaret Walker. At his father's death in 1729 the family estate went to an elder brother, and George did not enjoy the advantages of considerable wealth until his brother died in 1755.
Education
George's education was therefore largely informal; he learned Latin and Greek from his mother and studied law while working with an attorney.
Career
Wythe served briefly in 1754 as attorney general of the colony of Virginia and held political office almost continuously from then until 1778. He repeatedly served in the House of Burgesses and was its clerk from 1769 to 1775. As the crisis between the Colonies and Great Britain developed, Wythe protested against the new imperial policies. He was a delegate to the Second Continental Congress in 1775 and signed the Declaration of Independence. On the state level he was a member of the committee that designed Virginia's official seal. The Virginia Legislature appointed him to work with Thomas Jefferson, Edmund Pendleton, and others on the revision and codification of the state's laws. This work resulted in the elimination of feudal land practices from the law.
Wythe's contributions to the history of American jurisprudence were especially significant. He taught law to Jefferson and to many lawyers of future importance in the new republic. In 1779 Wythe was appointed professor of law in the College of William and Mary, the first such position in any American educational institution; he held the post for 11 years. From 1778 until his death he was also a judge in the Virginia chancery (or equity) court. On at least one occasion, he gave early voice to the distinctive American doctrine of judicial review-the power of courts to require that actions of government, particularly legislative enactments, conform to basic or constitutional law.
On June 8, 1806, George Wythe died in Richmond, of poisoning. A grandnephew and heir, George Wythe Sweeney, was acquitted of the murder in a trial in which the only witness was, as an African American, disqualified from testifying.