Commentaries on the Law of Bailments [1832]: With Illustrations from the Civil and the Foreign Law

Apart from James Kent, no man has had greater influence on nineteenth-century American jurisprudence than Joseph Story [1779-1845], associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1812 to 1845 and Dane Professor of Law at Harvard from 1829 to 1845. His many treatises, most of them on aspects of commercial law, were deeply influential and are often cited today. Published in 1832, Commentaries on the Law of Bailments was the first of these. Its final edition, the ninth, by James Schouler, was published in 1878. A contemporary review of the fourth edition notes:

The only complete and satisfactory Treatise upon the Law of Bailments, is [Story’s] work, which completely exhausts the whole learning applicable to the subject. Whatever was to be found in the English and American decisions, whatever the Roman and Continental jurisprudence afforded in illustration of the law of bailments, Mr. Justice Story collected and combined with surprising industry, and wonderful learning. He investigates each branch of the subject as a distinct and separate Title, thereby giving form and symmetry to this important department of the law which had not heretofore been so clearly done. Story’s Bailments affords one of the best examples, in modern times, of the illustration which our laws are susceptible of, by the aid of foreign jurisprudence. Had he written no other work than this, his reputation as a learned jurist, not only among his own countrymen but foreigners, would have been secure.

J.G. Marvin

Legal Bibliography (1847) 668-669

xxxiv, 411 pp.