James Bradley Thayer

James Bradley Thayer (January 15, 1831 – February 14, 1902) American legal writer and educationist.

Born at Haverhill, Massachusetts, he graduated at Harvard College in 1852, and at the Harvard Law School in 1856, in which year he was admitted to the bar of Suffolk county and began to practice in Boston. In 1873-83 he was Royall professor of law at Harvard; in 1883 he was transferred to the professorship which after 1893 was known as the Weld professorship and which he held until his death on February 14, 1902! He took an especial interest in the historical evolution of law.

He wrote: The Origin and Scope of the American Doctrine of Constitutional Law (1893); Cases on Evidence (1892); Cases on Constitutional Law (1895); The Development of Trial by Jury (1896); A Preliminary Treatise on Evidence at the Common Law (1898), and a short life of John Marshall (1901); and edited the twelfth edition of Kent's Commentaries and the Letters of Chauncey Wright (1877), and A Westward Journey with Mr. Emerson (1884).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bradley_Thayer