Page 20 - 2026 January February Magazine

Lincoln’s Law Professors
BY JOHN WEAVER
Author’s Note: The initial source for much of this article is Mark Steiner, Abraham Lincoln and the Rule of Law Books, 93 Marq.
L. Rev. 1280 (2010). It is not only fun to read, but unlike almost all law review articles, is illustrated.
Abraham Lincoln was famously
unschooled as a lawyer. He
didn’t go to Law School. He
didn’t go to college. He barely went to
school.
He wasn’t uneducated. He read
Shakespeare, the Bible, Aesop’s Fables,
Weems’ Life of Washington. His
speeches and writings reflect the variety
and depth of his reading.
Most lawyers in his time learned to be
lawyers by sitting in a lawyer’s office
“reading law” and copying documents.
Lincoln just read (no copying for him);
he read enough to pass an oral bar exam
by two justices of the Illinois Supreme
Court. He was formally admitted to the
bar on March 1,1837.
In 1858 he was asked by a young man
how to become a lawyer; he told him to
“read books without an instructor. That
is precisely how I came to the law.”
The books were:
• Blackstone’s Commentaries
• Chitty’s Pleadings
• Greenleaf’s Evidence
• Story’s Equity
• Story’s Equity Pleadings
He would probably have added Kent’s
Commentaries on American Law to
which he often referred. Greenleaf ’s
Evidence, and Story’s Equity Pleading
weren’t published until after 1837, so
Lincoln didn’t study them to become a
lawyer, but he used them later.
These books are by law professors, (in
one case a preceptor from the Inns of
Court) wrote these books. They were the
faculty at Lincoln’s Law School. Who
were they?
Willam Blackstone is probably the
most famous name in Anglo-American
law. It is he who said, “better that ten
guilty persons escape, than that one
innocent suffer.” (Commentaries vol 4
chap. 27). He was the Vinerian Professor
of Law at Oxford University, a King’s
Counsel and a judge. He was trained at
Oxford and then at the Middle Temple.
How Lincoln acquired his first copy of
‘Blackstone’ is a matter of some dispute:
One story is that he found it in the
bottom of a barrel he bought, another
that he borrowed it from a lawyer whom
he told he wanted to learn how to be a
lawyer.
However, he got it; he read it through
and read it again. I dare you to try that.
The Commentaries began as a series of
lectures for the upper class who needed
to understand the law, not for lawyers.
Yet they became the premier legal text
for both England and America.
They are a grand overview (with some
particulars) of the Common Law
of England as it existed in the late
eighteenth century. The table of contents
reads like a first-year law school
curriculum:
• Rights of Persons—Kind of like
Con Law
• Rights of Things—Property
• Public Wrongs—Crim
• Private Wrongs—Torts
You’ll notice not much on Contracts.
That was part of the Rights of Things.
Lord Mansfield (1705-1793) had more
to do with contracts than Blackstone.
Civ Pro is dealt with by Joseph Chitty.
Joseph Chitty was a practicing
attorney (though never a King’s or
Queen’s Counsel), a preceptor at the
Middle Temple.
His Pleadings went through seven
editions in Great Britain and sixteen in
the United States. Pleading was highly
technical at this time; some lawyers
specialized in drafting pleadings in both
law and equity (then separate court
systems).
Chitty also edited an edition of
Blackstone and wrote on what we would
now call UCC Sales, UCC Payment
Systems, International Law, Law and
Medicine, Game Laws, and Criminal
Laws. He is “the elder” because he had
three sons: Joseph, Jr., Thomas, and
Edward. All followed their father as
lawyers and legal writers. Edward also
wrote on fly-fishing and the snails of
Jamaica, whence he had been sent to
serve as a judge.
“Chancellor”James Kent was
the first professor of law at Columbia
College, now Columbia University (It
was King’s College until 1784.). He
continued his law practice (as did many
of the early law professors). After some
unsuccessful political campaigns, he
was appointed as a judge and then in
1814 as the Chancellor of New York. He
is credited with introducing the idea of
deposition discovery to supplement the
more tedious process of interrogatories
He served as Chancellor until 1823,
when he reached the then retirement
age of 60. He returned to New York
City (his judicial service was in Albany)
and resumed practice and teaching at
Columbia. He reorganized and updated
his teaching notes and eventually
published them as Commentaries on
American Law.
We know that Lincoln had a copy of
the Commentaries in his law office.
Like Blackstone's they began as lectures
and are organized around topics, but
Kent included topics that Blackstone
would not have—the Constitution of
the United States and the organization
and sources of state law. He deals more
than Blackstone did with commercial
law (including a discussion of
Corporations.) This isn’t surprising,
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