Joel Parker (jurist)

Joel Parker was born at Jaffrey, New Hampshire on January 25, 1795.[1] He studied at Groton Academy,[2] and later Dartmouth College, where he graduated in 1811.[1]

After studying law, he practiced at Keene. From 1824 to 1826, he was a member of the New Hampshire Legislature.[2] He was appointed an associate justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court in 1833 and became chief justice in 1838. He held this post until his resignation in 1848.[3] He studied at Groton Academy,[2]

In 1840 he was chairman of the committee on the revision of the New Hampshire statutes. From 1847 to 1857, he was professor of medical jurisprudence at Dartmouth. In 1848 he became a professor at the Harvard Law School, where he served until his death.[3] Conservative in politics, he opposed during the American Civil War the exercise by President Abraham Lincoln of what he deemed unconstitutional powers.

Joel Parker died in Cambridge, Massachusetts on August 17, 1875.[4]

• Progress (Hanover, New Hampshire, 1840)
• Daniel Webster as a Jurist, an address to the Harvard Law School (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1853)
• A Charge to the Grand Jury on the Uncertainty of Law (1854)
• Non-Extension of Slavery (1856)
• Personal Liberty Laws (1861)
• The Right of Secession (1861)
• Constitutional Law (1862)
• Habeas Corpus and Martial Law (Philadelphia, 1862)
• The War Powers of Congress and of the President (1863)
• Revolution and Reconstruction (1866)
• The Three Powers of Government (1869)
• Conflict of Decisions (1875)

• Wilson, J. G.; Fiske, J., eds. (1900). "Parker, Joel, jurist" . Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton.
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). "Parker, Joel. An American jurist" . New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.