Francis Wharton

Author Code: AFRW

Educated at Yale University where he graduated in 1839, Wharton was subsequently admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1843.He was active in Pennsylvania politics and for a number of years edited the North American. In 1846, he published A Treatise on the Criminal Law of the United States, an important work that went through numerous editions in the following years. He took a position as professor of English history and literature at Kenyon College in Ohio in 1856 and left in 1863 shortly after taking orders in the Episcopal church. He became the rector of St. Paul's Church in Brookline, Massachusetts that year and in 1871 became a lecturer at the Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary at Cambridge, while also lecturing on law at Boston University. He traveled in Europe for a couple of years before returning to teach law at George Washington University in 1885. Simultaneously, he held the position of solicitor of the Department of State and worked on an edition of the Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States (1889). Wharton possessed an exceptional legal mind and is one of the most important legal authors of the 19th century. His works include State Trials of the United States During the Administrations of Washington and Adams (1849), A Treatise on the Law of Homicide in the United States (1855), A Treatise on Medical Jurisprudence (1855), A Treatise on the Law of Negligence (1874), A Commentary on the Law of Agency and Agents (1876), A Commentary on the Law of Evidence in Civil Issues (1877) and Commentaries on Law (1884).