John William Wallace was born in Philadelphia, which was his home for the most of his life. His father, John Bradford Wallace, grandson of William Bradford, 1721/22-1791, the "patriot printer, " stood high as a lawyer among the members of a very distinguished bar; his mother, Susan (Binney) Wallace, according to her brother Horace Binney, possessed "the most uniformly bright and vivid mind" that he had ever known.
Wallace was educated by his parents and at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1833. He studied law with his father and John Sergeant.
He was admitted to the bar on October 27, 1836. With his abilities and distinguished connections he would have found easy the way to professional honors, but he never engaged in active legal practice. In 1841 he became librarian and treasurer of the Law Association of Philadelphia. He contributed the American notes to the third volume of Cases, Chiefly Relating to the Criminal and Presentment Law, Reserved for Consideration, known as "British Crown Cases Reserved". Pursuing his duties as librarian in his enthusiastic and scholarly way, he published anonymously in the American Law Magazine (January 1844) a contribution which was republished as The Reporters, Chronologically Arranged: with Occasional Remarks upon Their Respective Merits (1844). By this book, with revised and enlarged editions (1845, 1855, and 1882), full of professional learning lightly carried, his memory lives among legal scholars. In 1844 he became a standing master in chancery of the supreme court of Pennsylvania. The first of three volumes of his reports of Cases in the Circuit Court of the United States for the Third Circuit, covering the years 1842-62, appeared in 1849, the others in 1854 and 1871. In 1850 he visited England and Scotland and met great barristers and judges of the day. After the death of his brother Horace Binney Wallace, he took the latter's place as coeditor with J. I. Clark Hare of J. W. Smith's Selection of Leading Cases on Various Branches of the Law and American Leading Cases, collaborating in the preparation of three editions of the first and two of the second. From 1857 to 1860 he was again abroad, mainly in Italy, and upon his return resigned his librarianship, November 26, 1860, though he continued until December 3, 1864, to serve as treasurer of the Law Association. On March 21, 1863, he had become the reporter of the Supreme Court of the United States, from which office he resigned on October 9, 1875. The twenty-three volumes of Wallace's Reports cover a period of great importance in the Court's history (December 1863 - October 1874) and are of the highest quality. After being for twenty-four years a member of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Wallace became its president, Apr. 13, 1868, and served as such until his death. Among his publications, in addition to those mentioned above, were: The Want of Uniformity in the Commercial Law between the Different States of Our Union (1851); Pennsylvania as a Borrower . Her Ancient Credit: Her Subsequent Disgrace: Her . Future (1863); An Address Delivered at the Celebration by the New York Historical Society, May 20, 1863, of the Two Hundredth Birth Day of Mr. William Bradford (1863); A Discourse Pronounced on the Inauguration of the New Hall, March 11, 1872, of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (1872); An Address of Welcome, from the Librarians of Philadelphia, to the Congress of Librarians of the United States (1876); "Early Printing in Philadelphia"; An Old Philadelphian, Colonel William Bradford, the Patriot Printer of 1776: Sketches of His Life (privately printed, 1882; published, 1884).
Wallace was a devout Roman Catholic.
He was a man of positive opinions, likes, and dislikes, but reserved in expression. His manners were marked by a courtesy that had become old-fashioned.
He married on June 15, 1853 to Dorothea Francis Willing, who survived him, as did his only child, a daughter.
