Although Tapping Reeve began training students for the law in 1774, (his first charge was his wife’s brother, Aaron Burr), no records of Reeve’s method of legal instruction, lectures, or readings have survived from the time before 1790. From 1790 to 1798, when Reeve was solely responsible for teaching, notes or portions of notes kept by nine students in Reeve’s one room school house have been preserved at the library of the Litchfield Historical Society, the Connecticut Historical Society, the Connecticut State Library, Yale Law Library, the John Hay Library of Brown University, and the New York State Library. Those nine students, with the date of their registration, are
Eliphalet Dyer (1790) 2 volumes
Samuel Andrew Law (1793) 1 folder
Roger Minott Sherman (1794) 1 volume
Asa Bacon (1794) 5 volumes
Oliver Leicester Phelps (1794) 1 volume
Robert Fairchild (1794) 1 volume
George Larned (1795) 1 volume
George Tod (1796) 3 volumes
Thomas Scott Williams (1796) 1 folder
In addition, there is an anonymous notebook at Yale, dated to 1794.
Careful reading of these notebooks reveals that students often recorded the date of individual lectures. Moreover, three students from 1794 attended class together for lectures on municipal law, which Reeve began on November 4, 1794, a Tuesday. Municipal law was always the primary title in the curriculum and is most frequently the first title to occur in any set of Litchfield lectures. Reeve began his lectures on the different kinds of law and statutes by quoting William Blackstone’s definition of municipal law from the first volume of Commentaries on the Laws of England as “a rule of civil conduct prescribed by the supreme power in a state, commanding what is right and prohibiting what is wrong.” Many students took down that opening sentence as long as Litchfield was in operation. In most notebooks, these students also numbered their lectures, either continuously throughout the notebook or starting with lecture 1 at the beginning of a new title.
Legal instruction was not limited to lectures, however. Many of these notebooks contain essays written by Reeve, then copied from his manuscripts by students directly into their own books. Several of Reeve’s essays eventually appeared in print, such as “On operation of the terms Heirs and Heirs of his body in a will & other instruments,” copied by Eliphalet Dyer, which was later published in both editions of Reeve’s treatise, The law of baron and femme, 1816 and 1846. The essay on descents, sometimes attributed to William Hillhouse (1728-1816) or considered anonymous, was copied by Thomas Scott Williams and Robert Fairchild. In his notebook, Fairchild clearly identified this as “An essay on Descents, by Tapping Reeve, Esquire,” before transcribing its 32 pages. The printed edition of this essay (BEAL 4610) contains no date, no place of publication, and no printer, but Thomas Scott Williams has dated his own copy of descents December 4, 1797. It is unlikely Williams would have troubled to make a copy if the essay was available in print. A longer essay, on the courts of law and their jurisdiction in Connecticut, seems never to have been published, but versions of this essay continued to be copied by students into the early nineteenth century.
Another distinctive feature of the early notebooks is a chart drawn to compare English statutes with laws of Connecticut on the titles of husband and wife, master and servant, parent and child, guardian and ward, bailment, and executors and administrators. Such charts covered many pages, elaborating many points of comparison. Asa Bacon’s chart is the most extensive, running to 117 pages, with 54 comparisons under husband and wife, 64 comparisons for parent and child. His chart is organized in two columns, one headed “English law” the other “Conn. law.” An example from his chart for parent and child reads: English law 1. Every child not born in wedlock or a competent time after is a bastard. Conn. law 1.The same. Shorter charts are found in the notes of George Larned, Samuel Law and Eliphalet Dyer.
To understand the organization of Reeve’s lectures and to apprehend their content, the next section follows the general order of Reeve’s titles and briefly describes the topic of each lecture. I have chosen the fullest treatment of each title from these notebooks as illustrative examples.
Whitney S. Bagnall September 30, 2013
Different kinds of law & statutes (Roger Minott Sherman, 1794) [5 lectures]
Municipal law
Law merchant
Public & private statutes
Remedial statutes
Construction of penal statutes
Husband & Wife (Roger Minott Sherman, 1794) [9 lectures]
Consequences of marriage in respect to husband’s right to wife’s estate
Husband as tenant by curtesy
Property of feme covert for her sole & separate use
Wife’s power to bind herself by her own contracts
Agreements between husband & wife
Alienation by feme covert of her property
When husband &wife must be joined in a suit as defendants
Of celebration of marriage
Of marriages void & voidable
Parent & Child, Guardian & Ward (Asa Bacon, 1794) [8 lectures]
Definition of minors
Contracts of infants
Powers of infants
Illegitimate children
Child born after divorce a mensa et toro
Widow with children remarries
Parent’s power to correct the child
Court of probate may appoint guardian
Master & servant (Roger Minot Sherman, 1794) [4 lectures]
Several kinds of servants: slaves, apprentices, menial servants, day laborers, agents
Apprentices must be bound by deed (common law)
Master’s liability for contracts of his servant
Master’s power to correct his servant
Estates of deceased persons (Robert Fairchild, 1794) [15 lectures]
Principles of English law re: real & personal estates of deceased persons
Equitable assets
Legacies
Executor’s duties
Court of Chancery’s jurisdiction
Statute of Distributions of Charles II
Advancement of children by their father
Administrator’s duties
Property vests with administrator
Statute of mortmain
Nuncupative wills
Devises of real estate for payment of debts
Law of Connecticut regarding executors & administrators
Innkeepers, Bailments (Asa Bacon, 1794) [4 lectures]
Innkeeper’s duties
Bailor, bailee, common carrier
Common bailee
Pawns
Contracts (Oliver Leicester Phelps, 1794-5) [19 lectures]
Definition of contracts
Aliens
Express contracts
Neglect in the drawer
Fraud in contracts
Concealment of facts
Impossiblity of performance
Illegal contracts
Usury
Relief against usurious contracts
Unlawful contracts
Executed and executory contracts
Contracts treated as a mortgage
Consideration of contracts
Parole contracts
Evidence (Robert Fairchild, 1794) [9 lectures]
Testimony to be admitted or rejected
Testimony of a person assaulted
Judgments of courts
Recorded deeds
Interested persons
Exclusion of husband and wife as witnesses against each other
Release of interested persons
Children as witnesses
General character of a person
Real Property (Robert Fairchild, 1794.) [7 lectures]
Definition of real property
Estates in fee simple
Passing a fee by devise
Qualities of an estate tail
Estates in dower under English law
Estates of freehold and inheritance
Law of New York regarding fee simple
Mortgages (Robert Fairchild, 1794) [10 lectures]
Definition of mortgage
Conditions to a mortgage
Selling real property at public vendue to pay taxes
Equity of redemption
Lands descending to the heir
Decree of foreclosure
Liens upon the land
Several mortgagees and ejectment
Death of purchaser of an equity of redemption
Dower of equity of redemption
Injuries to real property & their remedies (George Larned, 1795) [8 lectures]
Trespass, lowest and most common injury
Trespass upon the crop in emblements
Trespass ab initio by an officer
Trespass in statute and common law
Waste
Power of Chancery to restrain waste
Ejectment; nuisance
Action of ejectment in Connecticut
Lex Mercatoria or Law Merchant (Robert Fairchild, 1794) [9 lectures]
Definition of law merchant
Bills of exchange & promissory notes
Contingency
Negotiability of bills of exchange
Notice for endorsor
Remedies of the parties
Policies of insurance
Double insurance
Factors
Pleas & pleading (Asa Bacon, 1794) [9 lectures]
Jurisdiction of court
Arrest of judgment
Death of plaintiff or defendant
Abatement
Demurrer
Replication
Granting of new trial
Scire facias
Writ of prohibition
Personal Actions (Robert Fairchild, 1794) [11 lectures]
Slander
Special damage stated in declaration
Pleadings in an action on slander
Malicious suit
Trover
Declaration in trover
Replevin
Trespass vi et armis
Case of Wilkes; doctrine of search warrants
Pleading the general issue
Adultery
Essays written by Tapping Reeve and copied into student notebooks
On Contracts
Eliphalet Dyer 1792 (14 pages)
George Larned 1795 (21 pages)
On Courts of law & their jurisdiction in Connecticut
Eliphalet Dyer 1790 (28 pages)
Robert Fairchild 1794 (28 pages)
George Larned 1795 (10 pages)
Oliver Leicester Phelps 1794-5 (32 pages)
Anonymous, Yale B L71 1794 (42 pages)
On Descents
Robert Fairchild 1794 (32 pages)
Thomas Scott Williams 1796 (32 pages)
On Bills of exchange
Robert Fairchild 1794 (8 pages)
On the liability of infants for their contracts
Eliphalet Dyer 1790 (9 pages)
Robert Fairchild 1794 (14 pages)
Asa Bacon 1794, (10 pages)
Can a feme covert by the laws of Connecticut devise her real estate
Eliphalet Dyer 1791 (18 pages)
On operation of the terms Heirs and Heirs of his body in a will & other instruments
Eliphalet Dyer 1792 (31 pages)
On Settlements
Thomas Scott Williams 1798 (7 pages)
Chart
Comparative view of the differences between the laws of England and those of Connecticut respecting husband & wife, master & servant, parent & child, guardian & ward, bailment, executors & administrators
These comparisons are found in the notes of Eliphalet Dyer, Asa Bacon, George Larned, Samuel Andrew Law.