John Chipman Gray | |
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| Born | (1839-07-14)July 14, 1839 Brighton, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | February 25, 1915(1915-02-25) (aged 75) Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Education | Harvard University (BA,LLB) |
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John Chipman Gray (July 14, 1839 – February 25, 1915) was an American scholar ofproperty law and professor atHarvard Law School. He also founded the law firmRopes & Gray, with law partnerJohn Codman Ropes. He was half-brother toU.S. Supreme Court associate justiceHorace Gray, and a grandson ofmerchant andpoliticianWilliam Gray.
Gray was born inBrighton,Massachusetts to Horace and Sarah Russell (Gardner) Gray, and graduated fromBoston Latin School. From there, he went on toHarvard University, where he earned hisBachelor of Arts degree in 1859, andHarvard Law School, where he earned hislaw degree in 1861. Gray's politics, prior to the Civil War tended toward the Whig Party. However, he transited into the Know-Nothing Party when the Whigs collapsed. Although he became a Republican, he opined, while serving as a judge advocate, that President Abraham Lincoln did not possess the constitutional authority to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.[1] However, when the Civil War began, he argued that the defeat of slavery was imperative for the survival of the nation.
He wasadmitted to the bar in 1862, and thereafter served in theUnion Army in theAmerican Civil War. He enlisted from Boston as a 2nd lieutenant in Company B, 4th Battalion, Massachusetts Infantry on May 27, 1862, was mustered out a few days later, and commissioned into Company H,3rd Massachusetts Cavalry on October 7, 1862. He left that unit to accept a commission as amajor in the U.S. Volunteers Adjutant General Department on July 25, 1864. Gray was wounded at theThird Battle of Winchester on September 19, 1864, and resigned from the Army on July 14, 1865.
Gray had narrow views on the service of African-American soldiers in the Army. Although he thought highly of his classmate,Robert Gould Shaw, when Shaw's Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Regiment was decimated at the Battle of Fort Wagner, Gray wrote his mother "with long and careful discipline I suppose a regiment of negroes might do as well as a white regiment, but negroes disciplined no better than many of our white units would be worthless."[2]
In 1865, after the end of the Civil War, Gray established his law practice inBoston, Massachusetts, which would eventually evolve into the modern firm ofRopes and Gray. In 1869, he began teaching at Harvard Law School, first as a lecturer, and became a full professor in 1875. In 1883, he was named Royall Professor of Law (a chair named forIsaac Royall, Jr.), a position he would hold for 20 years. He receivedhonoraryDoctor of Laws degrees fromYale University in 1894, and from Harvard in 1895.
Two years after retiring from teaching, he died at Boston on February 25, 1915.[3]
Gray wrote two books onfuture interests,Restraints on the Alienation of Property (1883), andThe Rule against Perpetuities (1886). His best known work is his survey of thecommon law,The Nature and Sources of the Law (1909). Gray's writings were so influential that they are still used inAmerican law schools and cited inlaw journals to this day.
