Background
Samuel Williston was born on September 24, 1861, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of Lyman Richards Williston, the head of a private academy, and of Ann Eliza Safford Gale.
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Samuel Williston was born on September 24, 1861, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of Lyman Richards Williston, the head of a private academy, and of Ann Eliza Safford Gale.
He received the B. A. from Harvard College in 1882, and after working for a few years as a secretary and then as a teacher, he entered Harvard Law School in 1885. He graduated in 1888 and received the LL. B.
Later Williston spent a year as clerk to U. S. Supreme Court Justice Horace Gray. He then joined the Boston firm of Hyde, Dickinson and Howe, with which he was affiliated until 1895. Although Williston practiced law on and off throughout his life, he found its scholarly aspects more appealing than its practice. At Harvard Law School he had compiled an excellent record, winning prizes and serving as a member of the first editorial board of the Harvard Law Review.
In 1889 his research on state laws proved helpful to the drafters of new constitutions for North Dakota and South Dakota. The following year he accepted an appointment as assistant professor at Harvard Law School. Because of family needs, he continued his practice until he suffered a nervous and physical breakdown in 1895. When he recovered, he discontinued his private work except for occasional cases and devoted himself to teaching and research. In these areas Williston proved to be one of the most capable and popular men ever to teach at Harvard Law School.
In 1901 the Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws chose him to prepare a draft statute covering the law of sales. The first act produced by the conference (on negotiable instruments), speedily adopted by the states, had been a flawed work reflecting the haste in which it had been produced. Williston, working quickly, nonetheless set a high standard and insisted that there be opportunity for review of the draft by law teachers and practicing attorneys. As a result, it was five years before the Uniform Statute on Sales was ready for submission to the states, but it received unanimous praise. Both the code and the method of review became standards against which to measure future efforts. Williston was responsible for the model statutes on sales, warehouse receipts, bills of lading, and certificates of stock adopted by most states. One estimate held that at least thirty-six states adopted laws he had drawn up. He also played an important role as reporter for the American Law Institute's project on the restatement of the common law and was responsible for the codification and simplification of the commercial law in this undertaking.
He was promoted to professor just before his collapse, to the Weld professorship in 1903, and to the Dane chair in 1919, which he held until his retirement in 1938. Few students who passed through his sales and contracts courses ever forgot the great horse "Dobbin, " which figured in countless cases illustrating the finer points of commercial law. An honorary degree from Harvard in 1910 cited him as "brilliant master and keen teacher of the common law, who for a score of years has trained and inspired a generation of lawyers. "
He also wrote or edited eighteen casebooks and more than fifty articles. His five-volume Law of Contracts (1920 - 1922) became the standard text in the field. The third edition of his Law of Sales (1909) came out in his eighty-fifth year. Other of his treatises covered commercial law, negotiable instruments, bankruptcy, and pleading. He served as Massachusetts commissioner for uniform state laws from 1910 to 1929.
In 1938, Harvard announced that Williston would retire because of age. Of course, the university insisted that age must give way to youth. Williston reluctantly stepped down. Williston's career, though, was far from over. He continued to do research until well past his ninetieth year, and after leaving Harvard he was a visiting professor at the University of Texas and at the Catholic University of America in Washington.
During World War II, Williston was called back to Harvard on a part-time basis to help fill teaching ranks depleted by calls to government service. Part-time soon became in effect full-time, and the octogenarian proved he was still an able and popular teacher. Williston also resumed a more active practice. Throughout his teaching years at Harvard he had always accepted requests from former students that he serve as a consultant on difficult cases dealing with commercial law. Now a former student arranged for Williston to become counsel to Hale and Dorr in Boston. He was given an office and support services at no charge and was free to keep all the fees that came to him. He worked out of this office until failing health in the mid-1950's made it impossible for him to continue. Williston had hoped that he would become Harvard's oldest living alumnus, and he achieved this status, but his physical condition had so deteriorated that it is doubtful that he derived any enjoyment from it. He died on September 24, 1861, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the age of 101.
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In 1905, Williston was made a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
On September 12, 1889, Samuel Williston married Mary Fairlie Wellman. They had two daughters.