John Codman Hurd

Background

Hurd was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on November 11, 1816. His parents were John Russell and Catharine Margaret (Codman) Hurd. He was reared and lived much of his life in New York City.

Education

As a boy he attended the grammar school connected with Columbia College. His father was a sufficiently successful merchant to afford his son a college education, and having completed the freshman and sophomore years at Columbia College, he went to Yale, where he graduated in 1836. For a year longer he remained in New Haven, studying in the Yale Law School.

Career

He returned to New York, where he spent two years in a law office before being admitted to the bar. Though nominally engaged in the practice of law, he was never active in that profession. Being a man of independent means, he devoted much of his time to business and indulged his scholarly inclinations. After his father died in 1872, he traveled far and wide, particularly in the Orient, and returned to live the remainder of his life in Boston.

At the time when the slavery controversy was at its height, Hurd was engaged in a painstaking analysis of the legal phases of that problem. In 1856 he published Topics of Jurisprudence Connected with Conditions of Freedom and Bondage. The first thick volume of his Law of Freedom and Bondage in the United States appeared in 1858 and the second volume, four years later. For thorough research, exhaustive discussion, and impartial treatment, this treatise on the most exciting topic of the age has never been excelled. Beginning with elementary principles of jurisprudence pertaining to personal bondage, he traced the legal history of chattel slavery from ancient times as a background for his analysis of American constitutional and statutory law, including the judicial decisions and dicta relating to such legislation. This work established his reputation as one of the most learned legal writers in the country.

After the Civil War he directed his attention to the problem of reconstruction. This led him into the realm of political philosophy and in January 1867 he contributed a discriminating article on "Theories of Reconstruction" to the American Law Review. After many years of careful study he came to the conclusion that the United States was a nation in fact. He believed that the nature of the Union was determined by social and political forces, not by the provisions of the federal constitution. Sovereignty he conceived to be the authority behind the law rather than the law itself, and therefore the location of supreme power in the United States could be discovered only by an examination of actual conditions and events. In basing his explanation upon facts instead of premises selected to justify a preconceived opinion of what the American Union ought to be, he considered himself unique. These ideas he expounded with many nice distinctions in The Theory of Our National Existence (1881) and in The Union-State: a Letter to Our States-rights Friend (1890).

Achievements

• Hurd is remembered as an American lawyer and author. His writings about the work and ideas of British legal theorist John Austin are responsible for spreading Austin's influence in the United States.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Union-State Electronic Resource: A Letter to Our States-Rights Friend

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Topics of Jurisprudence Connected With Conditions of Freedom and Bondage (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Topics of Jurisprudence Connected With Condi...)

Connections

He was never married.

Father:

John Russell Hurd

Mother:

Catherine Margaret Codman