Page 19 - Delaware Lawyer -Spring 2021

Battle R. Robinson is the latest in a long line of judges to live at her historic Georgetown home.
been added by “a gentleman of the bar of [New York]” in an effort to reconcile British and American practice.
In addition to the practice in Kings Bench and Common Pleas, manu- als addressed other British courts as well. Two copies of Joseph Harrison’s work on Chancery practice are in the collection. The first, from 1741, is The Accomplished Practiser in the High Court of Chancery. This professes to show “the whole method of proceed- ings according to present practice from the Bill to the Appeal.” A later version, The Practice of the Court of Chancery in its first American edition of 1807, is in the collection, and claims to contain “considerable additions.” In the fron- tispiece of the American volume, the publisher announces that in order to avoid errors and defects in the publica- tion, proof sheets were made available for review at the publisher’s counting house and at the Philadelphia public library. The publisher promises to pay $1.00 for any correction noted and ac- cepted. James P. Wilson has noted in the book that he acquired it from Mr. John Hazzard.45
Also concerned with Chancery practice is A Collection of Interroga- tories for the Examination of Witnesses in Courts of Equity. The suggested in- terrogatories are offered by an author identified only as “An Old Solicitor,” who quite correctly observes that the asking of proper questions “often require(s) great skill and judgment.”
John Frederic Schieffer, in his book,
An Explanation of the Practice of Law Containing the Elements of Special Pleading, modestly claims to reduce the practice of law “to the comprehen- sion of every one.” A 1793 edition of his explanation is in the Sussex library.
There are also several tomes that deal with criminal law. Pleas of the Crown, a two-volume work by Wil- liam H. Hawkins, is, in effect, a Code of English criminal jurisprudence. It
als.”43 Typically, they contain an expla- nation of the jurisdiction of the court being discussed, the forms used for pleading various causes in the court, information on processes, writs, etc., along with illustrative case reports and references to relevant statutes.
One John Impey is usually cred- ited with being the first writer to at- tempt a systematic account of practice in the two major English common law courts, Kings Bench and Common Pleas.44 One of his books, The Modern Pleader, in a version printed in Dublin in 1798, is in the Sussex collection. As promised by the book’s title, Impey at- tempts to bring stodgy British plead- ing “up to date” by advising which forms of pleading, such as “assump-
sit,” were obsolete, and which, such as “debt,” were, well, “modern.” Of special prominence was William Tidd, who saw his work go through nine edi- tions in his lifetime and whose work continued to be referenced through most of the 19th century, even in the United States, and, for that matter, referred to in Dickens’ David Copper- field. The second American edition of his two-volume work, with the lengthy title The Practice of the Court of Kings Bench in Personal Actions, With Refer- ences to Cases of Practice in the Court of Common Pleas, is in the Sussex library. It was published in New York in 1807 and was added to the library by Thomas Cooper. It includes the familiar notice that “corrections and additions” have
SPRING 2021 DELAWARE LAWYER 17
JASON MINTO