The Elements of Law: Being a Comprehensive Summary of American Civil Jurisprudence, for the Use of Students, Men of Business, and General Readers

Hilliard, Francis. The Elements of Law; Being a Comprehensive Summary of American Civil Jurisprudence. For the Use of Students, Men of Business, and General Readers. Boston: Hilliard, Gray, and Company, 1835. xv, 345, v pp. Reprinted 2002 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. LCCN 2001041395. ISBN 1-58477-188-7. Cloth. $75. * Hilliard [1806-1878] was a New England lawyer and prolific legal writer whose works set the standard for later law texts. "At the time that he wrote, judges and lawyers lacked legal treatises which cited American decisions and showed how far the English common law had been followed by American courts or modified to suit new conditions. Textbooks presenting cases from all states were needed in order to encourage the development of national judge-made law rather than particularistic local doctrines. Hilliard was one of the first and most voluminous of the authors who met these needs." DAB V:53. His vast legal knowledge is aptly employed in this important early textbook which provides a summary of the basic principles of American law. His success with this first work, which went into a second edition, led Hilliard to go on to write numerous other well-regarded treatises, many of which went into numerous editions, including The Law of Torts (1859), the first English treatise on the subject. Dictionary of American Biography V: 53-54. Catalogue of the Library of the Law School of Harvard University (1909) I: 925. Cohen, Bibliography of Early American Law 5393.Francis Hilliard is the author of 'The Elements of Law: Being a Comprehensive Summary of American Civil Jurisprudence, for the Use of Students, Men of Business, and General Readers', published 2002 under ISBN 9781584771883 and ISBN 1584771887.