Tapping Reeve (1744-1823)

Sources

Lawyer and educator

Background. Tapping Reeve was born in Brookhaven on Long Island, New York, in October 11744. The son of a Presbyterian minister, Reeve graduated from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) in 1763. After teaching school a few years, he moved to Connecticut to study law under Judge Jesse Root. Admitted to the bar in 1772, Reeve began practicing law in Litchfield.

Public Servant. As a young lawyer in Connecticut, Tapping Reeve took a keen interest in public affairs. By December 1776 he was a committed patriot and was appointed by the Connecticut Assembly to rouse support for the Revolution through the state. Reeve accepted an officer’s commission in the Continental Army but never saw battle. He served in both the legislature and the governor’s council and in 1788 was nominated the state’s attorney. A fervent Federalist in the 1790s, he wrote several newspaper articles supporting the Washington and Adams administrations. Reeve remained such a vocal partisan that a federal grand jury indicted him in April 1806 for libeling President Thomas Jefferson (the indictment was dismissed).

Litchfield Law School. Tapping Reeve’s lasting contribution to the American legal system was the school of law he founded in Litchfield. Reeve had tutored several young apprentices in his law practice and began to reconsider apprenticeship as a way to study law. He favored a more structured approach, combining organized lectures and moot courts for practical experience. In 1784 he built a small schoolhouse next to his home. It cost a student about $350 a year to attend the law school—$100 for tuition and $250 for board and expenses. Fourteen months of training was generally required before graduation. Reeve’s students were required to attend lectures on the law, undertake a carefully prescribed reading and writing program, and participate in the moot courts.

Illustrious Alumni. The Litchfield Law School’s reputation grew, and its influence was extraordinary. During its existence from 1784 to 1833, two graduates would go on to serve as vice president (Aaron Burr and John Calhoun); three would serve on the U.S. Supreme Court; and six would become cabinet members. Other illustrious alumni included 28 U.S. Senators, 101 members of the House of Representatives, 14 governors, and 16 state chief justices. For the first fourteen years, during which the school prepared two hundred students for careers in the law, Reeve taught alone. In 1798 he selected a former student, James Gould, to join him. Gould refined the school’s curriculum in the nineteenth century. When the school closed its doors in 1833, some 1, 016 law students had been graduated.

Community Leader. Reeve’s work at his law school did not put an end to his participation in civic affairs. In 1798 he was named a judge of the Connecticut Superior Court, and in 1814 he became chief justice of the Court of Errors. He retired two years later and devoted his time to writing legal tracts related to family law. He led the state’s temperance movement and helped form a society for the suppression of vice and immorality. Married twice (once to Aaron Burr’s sister Sally), Reeve’s only child, Aaron Burr Reeve, died in 1809. Reeve died in Litchfield on 13 December 1823.

Sources

Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993);

Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985).