Background
Lawrence Lewis was born on June 20, 1856 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, the son of Robert Morton and Anna Elizabeth (Shippen) Lewis. Named for an uncle, he was known to his contemporaries as Lawrence Lewis, Jr.
Lawrence Lewis was born on June 20, 1856 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, the son of Robert Morton and Anna Elizabeth (Shippen) Lewis. Named for an uncle, he was known to his contemporaries as Lawrence Lewis, Jr.
He was educated at Episcopal Academy and at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1876 with the degree of A. B. and later secured the master's degree.
After reading law in the office of William Henry Rawle, Lewis was admitted to the bar in 1879, and was made a secretary of the Law Academy of Philadelphia. In 1882 he published A History of the Bank of North America, a study prepared at the request of the president and the directors of the bank: a laudatory account from the Hamiltonian point of view, but valuable because of its portraits, facsimiles, letters, and list of subscribers and directors. He also published Memoir of Edward Shippen, Chief Justice of Pennsylvania (1883; reprinted from Pennsylvania Magazine for April 1883), and A Brief Statement of the Origin, Nature, and History of the French Spoliation Claims. He annotated The American and English Railroad Cases, volumes X-XX (1883 - 1885) and American and English Corporation Cases, volumes I-VIII (1884 - 1885), edited Weekly Notes of Cases, 1879-1890, and contributed to periodicals.
He early established himself as a practising attorney, winning his outstanding success as attorney for claimants under the Act of Congress of 1885 by which claims arising out of French actions prior to July 31, 1801, were to be adjudicated in the United States Court of Claims. As counsel for the defendant in the case of Forepaugh vs. Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad Company, which involved the important new legal principle of limited liability of business associates, he secured a verdict validating contracts which limited the liability of the company. Because of his study of land titles and of legal procedure he was called upon to draft for the state a new law of escheats greatly simplifying complicated legal processes. His career was cut short by his death in a railroad accident near West Chester.
He was a member of the Law Academy of Philadelphia.
In 1883 Lewis married Dora Kelly.