John Henry Wigmore

In 1889, Wigmore was recruited as a foreign advisor to Meiji period Empire of Japan, and was assigned to teach law at Keio University in Tokyo. Wigmore was the only full-time professor at the university at the time and was "instrumental" in designing the law curriculum.[1] He served at Keio University until 1892.

Once he arrived in Tokyo he "came under the spell of what is called Comparative Law",[7] although his interest pre-dated his experiences in Japan.[8] A key legacy of his time in Japan was a detailed study of the laws of the Tokugawa shogunate in Edo period Japan, which he edited and published as a series of papers while at Keio University. The collection of papers grew to 15 volumes under the collected title of Materials for the Study of Private Law in Old Japan before its completion in the mid-1930s.[9]

Wigmore maintained his interest in comparative law for the rest of his life, becoming a prominent writer in the field and has been referred to as the "father of American comparative law",[10] although some critics found his work "imaginary" and "needlessly uncritical".[11] Despite his prominence, he is remembered more for popularizing the field of comparative law than for his scholarly contributions to it.[10] His continuing fascination with similarities between legal systems around the world is evident in a 1932 article: "The legal profession throughout the world has the strongest ties that ought to bind, - ties of sentiment, ties of public duty, ties of common experience in human nature."[12]

He was also a manager of the 1907-founded Comparative Law Bureau of the American Bar Association, whose Annual Bulletin was the first comparative law journal in the United States.

Wigmore accepted a teaching post at Northwestern University and returned to the United States in 1893. He taught torts, comparative law, and evidence.[2] He became the first full-time dean of Northwestern Law School in 1901. In 1906, Wigmore helped establish the Northwestern University Law Review, which was a faculty-run publication in the early days.[13]

During his career at Northwestern, Wigmore "transformed a relatively modest institution into one of the leading law schools in the United States."[14] As a result of his successes, he was actively recruited by rival institutions including Yale and Columbia. Nevertheless, he remained dedicated to Northwestern.[15]

In 1926, a 37-note carillon was commissioned and installed at the Law School. Now known as the "Wigmore Chimes," the carillon plays the "Counselor's Chorus,"[16] a song written by Wigmore for the Law School.[17]

Wigmore served as Dean of Northwestern Law until 1929. Following his deanship, he remained a professor at the Law School taking emeritus status in 1934. He continued his work at Northwestern until his death on April 20, 1943[17] in a "freakish" taxi accident.[2] His widow, Emma, died just four months later.[3]

Wigmore continues to be honored by the university: he is the namesake of a prominent alumni club[18] and the annual student-run "Law School musical" is called the Wigmore Follies.[19]

In 1904 Wigmore began publication of his most famous work, a treatise that would serve as an encyclopedic survey of the development of the law of evidence. This massive work, referred to as Wigmore on Evidence[26] or just Wigmore (see § Select works for edition titles), was the product of "10 years of monastic toil."[27] Over the course of the next forty years, the initial four-volume treatise would swell to ten volumes containing over 85,000 judicial citations.[25] Contemporary reviews would declare the "sun of Evidence does pretty much 'rise and set in Wigmore'".[28] Wigmore's peers called the Treatise "one of the greatest intellectual feats in law-writing of any age or any country."[23] US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter called the Treatise "unrivaled as the greatest treatise on any single subject of the law."[29]

Wigmore on Evidence was probably the most "heavily cited law text of its day"[14] and the dominant source of US evidentiary law up until the codification of the Federal Rules of Evidence in 1975.[2] Wigmore was a strong advocate of a standard Code of Evidence and participated in a 1938 effort by the American Bar Association and the American Law Institute to produce a Model Code. This Model Code later became a basis for the Uniform Rules of Evidence drafted in the 1950s which was then used to help draft the Federal Rules of Evidence.[30] Today the Federal Rules of Evidence have become the primary modern doctrinal basis for the law of evidence in US federal trials and serve as the basis on which many states have modeled their evidence rules.

• — (1904). A treatise on the system of evidence in trials at common law including the statutes and judicial decision of all jurisdictions of the United States. Boston: Little, Brown. LCCN 04027684. OCLC 911862732.
• — (1923). A treatise on the Anglo-American system of evidence in trials at common law, including the statutes and judicial decisions of all jurisdictions of the United States and Canada (2nd ed.). Boston: Little, Brown, and company. LCCN 23010280.
• — (1940). A Treatise on the Anglo-American System of Evidence in Trials at Common Law: Including the Statutes and Judicial Decisions of All Jurisdictions of the United States and Canada (3rd ed.). Little, Brown.

• — (1940). Evidence in trials at common law (3rd ed.). Little Brown and Company. OCLC 10206127.

• Porwancher, Andrew (2016). John Henry Wigmore and the Rules of Evidence. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press. ISBN 978-0-8262-2086-8.
• Roalfe, W. R. (1977). John Henry Wigmore, Scholar and Reformer. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. ISBN 0-8101-0465-2.
• Swygert, Michael; Bruce, Jon (1985-01-01). "The Historical Origins, Founding, and Early Development of Student-Edited Law Reviews". Hastings Law Journal. 36 (5): 739. ISSN 0017-8322.