[This memoir was obtained through the instrumentality of Prof.
Kingsley of Yale College.]
RICHARD LAW was a son of the Hon. Jonathan Law, Governor of
Connecticut, and was born at Milford, on the 17th of March, 1733.
He was educated at Yale College, where he was graduated in 1751,
and where also he received the degree of LL. D. Immediately after
graduating, he entered upon the study of the law, in the office and
under the instruction of that able jurist and accomplished lawyer,
the Hon. Jared Ingersoll; and after a course of studies usual at that
day, he was, soon after the age of 21, admitted to the bar, at New
Haven; and immediately removed, and settled at New London, where he
became highly distinguished in his profession. As an advocate at the
bar, his style was pure and correct, but not copious and flowing. He
was distinguished more as a learned lawyer, a close logician, a fair
special pleader, than an eloquent orator. His talents were better
adapted to a court than a jury. He possessed a discrimination, and
power of seeing and seizing the great point in the case--the point on
which it must turn; and by a course of special pleadings--by drawing
on the "_heartstrings of the law_," he had a faculty of presenting
his point, by forming an issue in law for the decision of the court,
most favorably for his client; and on such issues, from the logical
structure of his mind, he was powerful. He was thoroughly read in
the ancient English law authorities; and few American lawyers or
jurists, of his day and age, better understood the great principles
of the English common law, or could better discriminate between such
of those principles as were applicable to the genius of a republican
government, and such as were not, than Judge Law. Those which he
adopted formed, as it respected the common law, the polestar of his
judicial decisions.
After a full and lucrative practice of several years, in consequence
of ill health, he was induced to relinquish the bar, and accept a
seat as Chief-Judge on the Bench of the County Court for the county
of New London. This office he held until May, 1784, when he was
appointed one of the Judges of the Superior Court.
In May, 1776, he was chosen an Assistant, a member of the Council or
upper house of Assembly, which office he held by annual elections of
the freemen, until May, 1786, when an act was passed excluding Judges
from a seat in the Legislature.
In 1777, it is believed that at May session, he was appointed by the
General Assembly a member of Congress; and continued with little, if
any intermission, a member of that body until 1782.
On granting the charter to the city of New London, he was by the
freemen in March, 1784, unanimously chosen Mayor; which office he
held until his death--a period of nearly twenty-two years.
On the return of peace, after the Revolution, he was appointed with
the Hon. Roger Sherman, to revise the code of Statute Laws of the
State. This code had not been revised for thirty years, and had
accumulated to a great size, from the great variety of statutes
enacted in the emergencies of the Revolution. In its subjects of
correction, a work of great interest and importance, it required no
small ability so to select and discriminate as to give universal
satisfaction. In the discharge of which duty he discovered great
knowledge of the science of legislation, and the true principles of
national government.
In May, 1786, he was appointed Chief-Judge of the Superior Court;
and continued in that office until the adoption of the Constitution
of the United States; when being by President Washington appointed
District Judge of the District of Connecticut, in October, 1789, he
resigned the former and accepted the latter, which he held until his
death, which occurred at New London, Jan. 26, 1806, in the 73rd year
of his age.
Judge Law lived in an eventful period of his country, and of the
world; and the many and various important offices which he held
and honorably sustained through the course of a long life, better
bespeak, than language can express, the character, the worth, and
merits of the man.