Wigmore, John Henry

Related Category: Law: Biographies

1863–1943, American legal educator, b. San Francisco, grad. Harvard (B.A., 1883; M.A. and LL.B., 1887). He taught (1889–92) Anglo-American law at Keio-Gijuku Univ., Tokyo. After 1893 he was a professor of law at Northwestern Univ.; from 1901 to 1929 he was dean of the law faculty. Wigmore is especially noted for his monumental work usually known as Treatise on Evidence (4 vol., 1904; 3d ed., 10 vol., 1940; suppl. 1964). This work is at the same time a lawyer's manual of practice and an incisive and highly critical survey of the law of evidence. His shorter works on evidence include books usually cited as The Code of Evidence (3d ed. 1942) and Students' Textbook of Evidence (1935). Out of Wigmore's interest in comparative law came his Panorama of the World's Legal Systems (3 vol., 1928; repr., 3 vol. in 1, 1936).