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29 A.B.A. J. 316 (1943)
John Henry Wigmore 1863-1943

handle is hein.journals/abaj29 and id is 324 raw text is: JOHN HENRY WIGMORE 1863-1943 By ALBERT KOCOUREK Professor, Northwestern University Law School RUDE thrust of fate has prematurely removed from the earthly scene a great master of the law, a great gentleman, and a great human being. Dean Wignore had completed his eightieth year. Non segni- bus annis sed actis evvum implebat-his life was meas- ured by toil and not in sluggish years. Excluding supple- mentary volumes and earlier editions, he had published forty-two original volumes, including ten volumes of the magnum opus, A Treatise on Evidence, and thirteen volumes of opera minora. He had also put out seven volumes of case-books or other compilations. In addi- tion, he had arranged, edited, written various introduc- tions to, and provided translations for, thirty other volumes. In the publication of the edited volumes, with the exception of Greenleaf on Evidence (16th ed., Vol. I), he had the cooperation of many others, but next to the authors themselves, it cannot be doubted that his part, both qualitatively and quantitatively, was very important. This sum total of seventy-nine volumes, even after such diminution for the part contributed by others, as may be necessary, perhaps has never been exceeded in sheer bulk by any law writer. Moreover, against the diminution suggested, it is probable additions will be found, if and when the account is finally stated. It is a curious fact that in all these labors, Dean Wig- more never made use of a professional research assistant. The illumination and the drudgery were his alone. He wrote a clear hand and his copy could go to the printer without the delay (and mistakes) of an intermediate type-script. He read his own proofs. He could read a three-page galley proof in what amounted to little more than a glance. In that glance he would detect the most obscure errors wherever they lurked on the galley. The Treatise on Evidence has been rated as one of the greatest intellectual feats in law-writing of any age or of any country. Dean Wigmore is best known in this country and England through this notable work. By means of it he had always maintained a close contact in Common Law countries with the practicing lawyer, who has long since discovered that this treatise contains much more than the unfamiliar words, autoptic profer- ence. In continental Europe, evidence is not a subject but only a topic, and in consequence Dean Wigmore's fame in Europe rested on different grounds. Dean Wigmore's career suggests a comparison with the lives of such great legal personalities, among others, as Jeremy Bentham, Sir Frederick Pollock, Mr. Justice Holmes, and Josef Kohler. Such a comparison is not here in question. It will suffice to recall that Dean Ros- coe Pound, himself a distinguished intellectual athlete and a formidable legal scholar, generously rated Dean Wigmore as our first legal scholar. Dean Wigmore was the Crichton admirabilis of his time. His natural endowments were far above the aver- age and his accomplishments prodigious. He was a con- Dean and Mrs. Wigmore in the Law School Gardens, Northwestern University AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION JOURNAL

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