Simon Greenleaf

Simon Greenleaf (December 5, 1783 – October 6, 1853) was an American lawyer and jurist. He was a professor of law at Harvard University and wrote the influential Treatise on the Law of Evidence and Testimony of the Evangelists

Early life and legal career

He was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts. His parents moved to New Gloucester, which was in Massachusetts but is now in Maine, which left him in Newburyport, Massachusetts, under the care of his grandfather Jonathan Greenleaf. There, Simon was educated at the Latin school and studied the Greco-Roman classics. When he turned 16, he rejoined his parents in New Gloucester.

In 1801, he joined the law office of Ezekiel Whitman (later the Chief Justice of Maine) and in 1806 was admitted to the Cumberland County bar as a legal practitioner. On 22 March 1806, in New Gloucester, he married Hannah Kingman.

He then opened a legal practice at Standish, Maine, but six months later relocated to Gray, Maine, where he practised for twelve years and in 1818 moved to Portland, Maine. Greenleaf's political preferences were aligned with the Federalist Party, and in 1816, he was an unsuccessful candidate for that party in Cumberland County for the Senate. He was reporter of the Supreme Court of Maine from 1820 to 1832 and published nine volumes of Reports of Cases in the Supreme Court of Maine (1820–1832).

Greenleaf was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1820.

He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by Harvard University in 1834. He received the same honor from Amherst College in 1845 and again from the University of Alabama in 1852. In 1848, he was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society.