Page 15 - Delaware Lawyer -Spring 2021

Battle R. Robinson is pictured at The Judges, her home in Georgetown, which houses the law books of James Patriot Wilson.
gentleman of experience and ability has collected matter sufficient to form a complete volume.” By the mid to late 1700s, the situation began to change as the reporting style became stan- dardized and reporters began to be employed specifically for the purpose of collecting decisions. Eventually, decisions of British courts came to be published at the end of each term of court.
Two of the earliest and best known collections of cases are found in the Sussex library: those of Edward Coke16 and George Croke.17 Coke (1552– 1634) was the preeminent jurist of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras and his work was very influential in America. His “reports” were not so much re- ports as they were commentaries on various cases with which he had been involved or was familiar. Croke, who was admitted to the English bar in 1581, wrote his reports in Norman French; they were later translated and printed by his son-in-law (the improb- ably named Harbottle Grimston).
Both Coke and Croke appear in the Sussex library in later editions of their works, Coke in a 1738 edition, Croke in a fifth edition, prepared by Thomas Leach in 1791.
Another prominent example of early reports in the Sussex library are those of William Peere Williams, ad- mitted to practice in 1680. His three- volume collection of cases decided in the High Court of Chancery was ed- ited by his son and made available be- ginning in 1740. Williams’ reports are said to be of “unusual value by reason of the accuracy and perspicacity with which not only the decisions but the material facts and arguments of coun- sel are recorded.”18
These traits came to be emulated in the significant work of Sir James Burrow, who reported cases from the Kings Bench. He was one of the first “professional” law reporters, having been appointed “to commit to writing and truly to deliver as well the words spoken as the judgments and rea- sons thereupon given” in the courts
at Westminster.19 His tenure paral- leled the judgeship of Lord Mansfield, which gave his reports frequent cita- tion and notoriety. Burrow is usually credited with establishing the mod- ern form of a law report, namely: the reporter’s statement of the facts, a summary of the arguments of coun- sel, and the court’s judgment. Ap- pearing in the Sussex library are the five volumes of Burrow’s “Reports of Cases Adjudged in the Court of Kings Bench,” published in Dublin in 1784 and 1785. In addition to his service as reporter to the court, Burrow was the author of books on a variety of topics. He was keenly interested in sci- ence and mathematics and was elected to the Royal Society, serving briefly as its President.
For those who may ascribe a gloomy aspect to someone who spent his days sitting in a court room, lis- tening to lawyers argue and summa- rizing what he heard, the epitaph of Burrow’s tombstone is worth quot- ing: “The convivial character was
SPRING 2021 DELAWARE LAWYER 13
JASON MINTO