► See also Duhaime's Timetable of World Legal History.
The lives and times of the most famous (or infamous) people that have shaped justice, law or legal institutions. The persons selected are taken from all nations and eras and based only on merit. Most are lawyers but this is not a criteria for inclusion.
Nominations welcome! We're always looking for persons, dead or alive, that have made major contributions to, or have had a major impact on, the law. Please e-mail nominations by referring to the Contact Information page.
- Adams, John • 1735-1826, USA
- Allen, Macon • 1816-1894, USA
- Aske, Robert • 1500-1537, England
- Alfred the Great • 849-899, England
- Barton, Edmund • 1849-1920, Australia
- Beccaria, Cesare • 1738-1794, Italy
- Bentham, Jeremy • 1748-1832, England
- Blackstone, Sir William • 1723-1780, England
- Bonaparte, Napoleon • 1769-1821, France
- Bracton, Henry • 1210-1268, England
- Brent, Margaret • 1601-1671, USA
- Cicero, Marco Tullius • 106-43 BC, Rome
- Coke, Edward • 1522-1634, England
- Compton, Lynn "Buck" • 1921 -, USA
- Danton, Georges Jacques • 1759-1794, France
- Darrow, Clarence • 1857-1938, USA
- Deborah • 1000 BC, Israel
- Delgado, Alfredo "Pancho" • Uruguay
- Denning, Alfred • 1899-1999, England
- Dickens, Charles • 1812-1870, England
- Dixon, Owen • 1886-1972, Australia
- Draco • 620 BC, Greece
- Edward I • 1239-1307, England
- Gaius • 130-180, Rome
- Gautama, Siddhartha • 500 BC, India
- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von • 1749-1832, Germany
- Hammurabi • 1810-1750 BC, Babylon
- Hand, Billings Learned • 1872-1961, USA
- Holmes, Wendell Oliver • 1841-1935, USA
- Howard, John • 1726-1790, England
- Irnerius • 1050-1128, Rome
- Jefferson, Thomas • 1743-1826, USA,
- Justinian • 483-565, Rome
- Lincoln, Abraham • 1809-1865, USA
- Lockwood, Belva • 1830-1917, USA
- Lycergus • 700-630 BC, Greece
- Macdonald, John A. • 1815-1891, Canada
- Mansfield, Belle • 1846-1911, USA
- Marshall, Thurgood • 1908-1993, USA
- Moliere, aka Jean B. Poquelin • 1622-1673, France
- More, Thomas • 1478-1535, England
- Muhammad • 570-632, Saudia Arabia
- Obama, Barack • 1961-, USA
- Ray, Charlotte • 1850-1911, USA
- Robespierre, Maximilien • 1758-1794, France
- Rush, Benjamin • 1745-1813, USA
- Sieyes, Emmanuel Joseph • 1748-1836, France
- Solon • 638-558 BC, Greece
- Tiberius Coruncanius • 281-241 BC, Rome
- Torrens, Robert • 1814-1884, Australia
- Tribonian • 500-547, Rome
- Ulpianus • 200, Rome
- Walker, Griffith Samuel • 1845-1920, Australia
Cesare Bonesana Beccaria
1738-1794. Beccaria (portrait, right) Italian jurist. Wrote Dei deliti e delle pene (Essay on Crimes and Punishments) in (1764) which was translated and brought to light the barbarous nature of many punishments especially torture.
His main theory was that punishment for crime should be proportionate and not in any event to exceed what was necessary to maintain public order. He opposed capital punishment, torture and secret trials and he suggested hard labor or incarceration for persons convicted of murder.
The English justice system was greatly influenced by Dei deliti e delle pene.
Jeremy Bentham
(1748-1832). English legal reformer, born in 1748. Son of a lawyer, Bentham got his law degree from Oxford but never practiced. This English son of a lawyer urged the implementation of Beccaria's ideas in England where, in 1780, 350 different offences incurred the capital punishment.
Bentham published Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation in 1789 which introduced the principles of utilitarianism in England (the belief that the aim of the individual and the legislator in the conduct of society should be to achieve the greatest happiness for the greatest number). Amongst his popular ideas was a complete reform of the British criminal laws including a large reduction of crimes which were punished by capital punishment. His theories were so popular that he was made a citizen of France in 1792. When he died in 1832, his head was cut off and his body embalmed, affixed with a wax replica of his head and dressed. It is still preserved in that condition at University College in London.
Edward Coke
Born in Norfolk, England in 1552, and educated at Cambridge University. Coke was called to the bar in 1578; became a member of Parliament in 1589 and subsequently held the positions of Solicitor-General, Speaker of the House of Commons, and Attorney-General. Appointed Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas in 1606, and Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench in 1616.
A champion of the common law, he was removed from office for resisting the arbitrary use of royal power. Author of a highly respected series of law reports (Coke's Reports), and the landmark Institutes of the Laws of England (1628 -44) - the greatest work of English jurisprudence until Blackstone's Commentaries. Coke died in 1634.
Alfred Denning
Also known as "Lord Denning". British judge.
Lawyer since 1923 and a judge since 1944. Gained prominence in appointed to investigate a sex scandal that rocked the British government in the early 60s.
Endeared himself to the public by the simplicity of his legal decisions. Although many of his decisions as a judge were controversial, he is considered to be one of the most influential judges in the history of English common law, particularly in the area of contract law.
Charles Dickens
1812-1870. Famous British author including such masterpieces as David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, The Pickwick Papers, A Tale of Two Cities, The Bleak House and Great Expectations.
His father was imprisoned for an unpaid debt causing a 12-year old Dickens to be forced from school and into a factory to work. At the age of 15, he became a clerk in a law office and began to report on law cases and the debates of Parliament. The Pickwick Papers (1836) was famously successful and thrust him in the limelight. Dickens used his money and fame to press for social changes to the real life misery of the London poor. He helped to establish a home for reformed prostitutes, argued for cleaning of the slums of London, education reform and improved sanitary controls.
His bleak portrayal of a corrupt justice system in the book Bleak House (1853) has been called Dickens's masterpiece. Dickens visited Canada and the USA in 1842, causing a sensation.
Owen Dixon
1886-1972. Appointed to the High Court of Australia in 1929, and Chief Justice of Australia 1952- 1964. In 1950, Dixon (pictured, left) was appointed United Nations mediator in a border dispute between India and Pakistan.
On his retirement, the Australian Prime Minister (Sir Robert Menzies) remarked: "I have heard at least two Lord Chancellors [of England] give it as their opinion that your Honour was the greatest judicial lawyer in the English-speaking world, and I have heard that view confirmed by the most brilliant and celebrated occupant of the Supreme Court bench in Washington."
Draco
620 BC. Draco, a Greek citizen was chosen to write a code of law for Athens (Greece).
The penalty for many offences was death; so severe, that the word "draconian" comes from his name and has come to mean, in the English language, an unreasonably harsh law. His laws were the first written laws of Greece.
These laws introduced the state's exclusive role in punishing persons accused of crime, instead of relying on the bloody system of private justice.
The citizens adored Draco and upon entering an auditorium one day to attend a reception in his honor, the citizens of Athens showered him with their hats and cloaks as was their customary way to show appreciation. By the time they dug him out from under the clothing, he had been smothered to death.
Edward I
(1239-1307). Nicknamed the "English Justinian."
King Edward institutionalized the practice of regularly summoning public assemblies of English nobility and allowing this assembly to decide important matters of state including the law. He used the body to promulgate many laws from which some of the most important legal procedures had their origin such as the quo warranto remedy.
These assemblies were the forerunners of the modern parliaments or legislatures.
Edward I also codified, by the Statute of Winchester as it became known, a police system to protect public order. In 1291, he instituted a system of lawyer certification and "and that those so chosen should follow the Court and take part in its business and no others." Representation of others in court has been the exclusive and statutory privilege of certified lawyers ever since, in most countries in the world.
Siddhartha Guatama
(Buddha), Indian philosopher (560 BC - 480 BC).
He established a social doctrine called The Four Noble Truths which basically suggested that desire is the cause of all suffering and conquering desire would end suffering.
The philosophy of Buddhism has been a tremendous influence on the development of Asiatic law.
Samuel Walker Griffith
1845-1920. Premier of the Colony of Queensland, then Chief Justice of Queensland (1897-1903) and first Chief Justice of Australia (1903-1918).
He was Vice-President of the Federal Constitutional Convention of 1891 and chairman of its drafting committee. As such, he contributed more to the drafting of the Australian Constitution than any other single individual.
His drafting skills live on in other important statutes, including the Queensland Criminal Code (and those of Western Australia and the Northern Territory, which are largely based on the Queensland model), and the Rules of the High Court of Australia.
Thomas Jefferson
1743-1826. American president and author of the Declaration of American Independence.
Jefferson was born in Virginia and became a lawyer. Turning his attention to politics, Jefferson penned a series of articles which were critical of the authority of the British King over his fellow American citizens. "The God who gave us life," he wrote, "gave us liberty at the same time. The hand of force (the British) may destroy, but cannot disjoin them."
In 1776, he was appointed to chair a group of five which drafted the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson then returned to govern the new state of Virginia where he introduced a series of legal reforms. Many of his reforms were ahead of his time such as proposing a tax-based free system of education and public libraries. His bill to allow complete religious freedom met with much resistance but finally passed. He said:
"All men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions on matters of religion. The same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities."
He was elected to the American Congress. Amongst his achievements was a bill which rejected the English Pound as currency and replaced it with an American dollar. He became President in 1801 and oversaw the purchase of the 800,00- square mile Louisiana Territory from France in 1803 for $15-million.
"A little rebellion now and then is a good thing," he once said. "As necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."
Abraham Lincoln
1809-1865. American president during the American Civil War and chief architect of the demise of the Confederate forces and slavery.
Lincoln became a lawyer and was a member of the Illinois legislature for eight years and represented clients throughout his state with a zeal that caused his law partner to say of him: "His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest."
Even as early as 1854, he had publicly declared that slavery should be abolished. Lincoln became President in 1961and in 1863 he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared slaves in the Confederacy free.
He was an inspirational speaker and writer. Of the dead during the civil war he said at Gettysburg that:
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from this earth."
Re-elected in 1864, with the end of the Civil War soon at hand, Lincoln said: "with malice towards none; with charity towards all; with firmness in the light, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds."
He was assassinated on April 14, 1865.
John A. MacDonald
(1815-91). Canada's first prime minister and architect of the Canadian constitution, the British North America Act. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Macdonald moved to Canada while still a child.
He practiced law in the British colony of Upper Canada and later became a member of that colony's parliament and the united parliament with Lower Canada (Quebec). His biggest achievement was guiding the constitutional conferences which led to the 1867 BNA Act, joining Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia as the confederation of Canada.
Queen Victoria rewarded him for his efforts by appointing him as the country's first prime minister, a position that Macdonald would win from the electorate many times thereafter. Macdonald led the country through many difficult periods including Fenian attacks through the USA and the union of the colonies of Prince Edward Island, British Columbia and Manitoba with Canada. Several of his legal reform measures are documented in Canadian Law: A History.
Thurgood Marshall
1908-1993. Tenacious human rights advocate.
Led the most important civil rights cases as senior lawyer for the American National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which he worked for twenty years, including monumental and high profile legal battles heard before the Supreme Court, such as the desegregation of the state-run school systems. President John F. Kennedy appointed him to the U.S. Court of Appeals in 1962.
In 1967, he was elevated to the Supreme Court. During his twenty-five year tenure on the highest court in the USA, Marshall's decisions echoed his principals of anti-discrimination and equality of all citizens, of without racial distinction.
Benjamin Rush
1746-1813. American medical doctor.
One of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, Dr. Rush pressed for an end to public executions in the United States.
Founded the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, his new ideas borrowed heavily on Beccaria and Bentham and included incarceration instead of capital punishment.
He is known as the first prominent American to call for the end of capital punishment.
His efforts led to Pennsylvania to become one of the first states in the world for which only premeditated murder was met with capital punishment (other states followed soon after).
Robert Torrens
1814-1884. Australian and British statesman. Worked in the customs office in London, moving to Adelaide, Australia in 1840. By 1853, he had been elected to the Legislative Council of South Australia, becoming premier in 1858.
Torrens invented a new land registration system, which greatly simplified the English formalities of land conveyance. His method consolidated all land titles in a central office, the records of which were final. His system was adopted all over Australia and in several Canadian provinces such as Alberta and British Columbia. Torrens eventually returned to England where he was elected to the British House of Commons in 1868.
►References & Acknowledgments
Lloyd Duhaime wishes to thank Anthony J H Morris QC, Brisbane, Australia for the additions (including text) of Sir Owen Dixon, Sir Samuel Walker Griffiths and Sir Edward Coke. Also, thanks to Edward Clayton of Central Michigan University for his research re Cicero.