James DeWitt Andrews: Classifying the Law in the Early Twentieth Century

Abstract

This paper examines the efforts of New York lawyer James DeWitt Andrews and others to create a new classification system for American law in the early years of the twentieth century. Inspired by fragments left by founding father James Wilson, Andrews worked though the American Bar Association and organized independent projects to classify the law. A controversial figure, whose motives were often questioned, Andrews engaged the support and at times the antagonism of prominent legal figures such as John H. Wigmore, Roscoe Pound, and William Howard Taft before his plans ended with the founding of the American Law Institute in 1923.

Keywords: James DeWitt Andrews, Henry T. Terry, John H. Wigmore, Roscoe Pound, William Howard Taft, American Bar Association, American Law Institute, Corpus Juris Project, American Academy of Jurisprudence, legal classification