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Back to article: SIMON GREENLEAF (1783-1853)

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GREENLEAF, SIMON (1783-1853), American jurist, was born at Newburyport, Massachusetts, on the 5th of December 1783. When a child he was taken by his father to Maine, where he studied law, and in 18o6 began to practise at Standish. He soon removed to Gray, where he practised for twelve years, and in 1818 removed to Portland. He was reporter of the supreme court of Maine from 1820 to 1832, and published nine volumes of Reports of Cases in the Supreme Court of Maine (1822-1835). In 1833 he became Royall professor, and in 1846 succeeded Judge Joseph Story as Dane professor of law in Harvard University; in 1848 he retired from his active duties, and became professor emeritus. After being for many years president of the Massachusetts Bible Society, he died at Cambridge, Mass on the 6th of October 1853. Greenleaf's principal work is a Treatise on the Law of Evidence (3 vols., 1842-1853). He also published A Full Collection of Cases Overruled, Denied, Doubted, or Limited in their Application, taken from American and English Reports (1821), and Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence administered in the Courts of Justice, with an account of the Trial of Jesus (1846; London, 1847). He revised for the American courts William Cruise's Digest of Laws respecting Real Property (3 vols., 1849-1850).