George Sharswood

George Sharswood (July 7, 1810 – May 28, 1883) was a Pennsylvania jurist and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. He was also the Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

George Sharswood
portrait by John Neagle
Born	7 July 1810
Died	28 May 1883  (aged 72)

Biography

Sharswood was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He graduated with honors from the University of Pennsylvania in 1828. On September 5, 1831, he was admitted to the bar of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

He served as a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 1837. He was a district judge in Pennsylvania from 1845 to 1867.

In 1850 he became a Professor of Law at and reorganized the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he served for 18 years.[1] He was Dean of the Law School from 1852 to 1868.[2] He was senior professor of law there until 1867, when he resigned his chair.

'During his tenure he was a respected author, editor and commentator.[3] In 1859, then Professor George Sharswood published through Childs and Peterson in Philadelphia a two-volume edition of Blackstone's Commentaries which weeded and gleaned the notes and commentaries of the prior English editors and added a treasure trove of new notes and observations on the application or divergence of the various sections of the Commentaries in America from the founding of the country to the Civil War, collecting American cases and references to Kent's Commentaries to illustrate his observations. This effort continued in subsequent editions after he became an Associate Justice, at least through the publication of an 1872 edition by Lippincott & Co. in 1872.[4]

He was appointed to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in 1868, and was named Chief Justice in the court in 1879. He retired in 1882.[1]

Justice Sharswood is buried in Philadelphia's Laurel Hill Cemetery, Section R, Plots L501 & 503.[5]

Sources

• Penn Law School
• Biography of George Sharswood by Samuel Dickson

References

1. Faculty: Fellowships • Penn Law
2. Brief Histories of the Schools of the University of Pennsylvania Law School | University Archives and Records Center
3. "Review: Blackstone's Commentaries (Sharswood Ed. 1859)". 90 (187). The North American Review. April 1860: 550–552. JSTOR 25107628. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
4. Sharswood, Associate Justice George (1872). Blackstone's Commentaries. Philadelphia: Lippincott & Co.
5. The Political Graveyard

External links

• Portrait at the University of Pennsylvania
• Three volumes of handwritten letters from George Sharswood to his children, George and Jane, while the latter were on a tour of Europe, 1875-1876. The University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries Special Collections
• Works by George Sharswood at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about George Sharswood at Internet Archive

Preceded by none; first	Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School 1852–1868	Succeeded by E. Spencer Miller

Legal offices
Preceded by Daniel Agnew	Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania 1883–1887	Succeeded by Ulysses Mercur