Josiah Quincy Jr. (1744-1775), Boston lawyer and patriot penman, had he lived longer could have been a leader of the new American Republic with a name familiar in most households. In a four-volume series, the Colonial Society of Massachusetts will reprint his major political and legal writings. Editor Neil Longley York provides a significant biographical introduction, followed by Quincy's Political Commonplace Book, in which the patriot noted down passages from his wide reading in politics and history that he believed relevant to his own times. Thus, readers have an unusual opportunity to...

Josiah Quincy Jr. (1744-1775), Boston lawyer and patriot penman, had he lived longer could have been a leader of the new American Republic with a name familiar in most households. In a four-volume series, the Colonial Society of Massachusetts will reprint his major political and legal writings. Editor Neil Longley York provides a significant biographical introduction, followed by Quincy's Political Commonplace Book, in which the patriot noted down passages from his wide reading in politics and history that he believed relevant to his own times. Thus, readers have an unusual opportunity to...

The most unique and important of all early American law reports are those of Josiah Quincy Jr. (1744-1775). These are the first reports of continental America's oldest court, the Superior Court of Judicature of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, direct ancestor to today's Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Quincy's candid accounts of events great and small shed light on life in the American colonies just before the Revolution. Reports such as Paxton's Case of the Writs of Assistance (1761) have become great landmarks of American constitutional law, cited by the Supreme Court of the...

The most unique and important of all early American law reports are those of Josiah Quincy Jr. (1744-1775). These are the first reports of continental America's oldest court, the Superior Court of Judicature of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, direct ancestor to today's Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Quincy's candid accounts of events great and small shed light on life in the American colonies just before the Revolution. Reports such as Paxton's Case of the Writs of Assistance (1761) have become great landmarks of American constitutional law, cited by the Supreme Court of the...

Successful Boston lawyer, active member of the Sons of Liberty, and noted political essayist, Josiah Quincy Junior (1744-1775) left a lasting impression on those he met--for his passion in the courtroom as well as his orations in the Old South Meeting House, and for his determination to live fully, despite being afflicted with a disease that would cut his life short. Gathered in this, the sixth and final volume of the Quincy Papers, are Quincy's surviving correspondence, his essays for the Boston press written between 1767 and 1774, and his 1774 pamphlet Observations, which was the...

Harvard Law School is the oldest and, arguably, the most influential law school in the nation. U.S. presidents, Supreme Court justices, and foreign heads of state, along with senators, congressional representatives, social critics, civil rights activists, university presidents, state and federal judges, military generals, novelists, spies, Olympians, film and TV producers, CEOs, and one First Lady have graduated from the school since its founding in 1817.

During its first century, Harvard Law School pioneered revolutionary educational ideas, including professional legal education...