James Bradley Thayer (January 15, 1831 – February 14, 1902) was an American legal theorist and educator.
Life
Born at
Haverhill, Massachusetts, he graduated from
Harvard College
Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher lea ...
in 1852, where he established the overcoat fund for needy undergraduates.
In 1856 he graduated from
Harvard Law School, was admitted to the bar of
Suffolk County and began to practice law in
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
. From 1873 to 1883 he was Royall professor of law at Harvard. In 1883 he was transferred to the professorship which after 1893 was known as the Weld professorship and which he held until his death on February 14, 1902. He took a special interest in the historical evolution of law.
He wrote: ''The Origin and Scope of the American Doctrine of Constitutional Law'' (1893);'' Cases on Evidence'' (1892); ''Cases on Constitutional Law'' (1895); ''The Development of Trial by Jury'' (1896); ''A Preliminary Treatise on Evidence at the Common Law'' (1898), and a short life of
John Marshall (1901); and edited the twelfth edition of Kent's ''Commentaries and the Letters of
Chauncey Wright
Chauncey Wright (September 10, 1830 – September 12, 1875) was an American philosopher and mathematician, who was an influential early defender of Darwinism and an important influence on American pragmatists such as Charles Sanders Peirce and Wi ...
'' (1877), and ''A Westward Journey with Mr. Emerson'' (1884).
Rational basis review
The concept of
rational basis review
In U.S. constitutional law, rational basis review is the normal standard of review that courts apply when considering constitutional questions, including due process or equal protection questions under the Fifth Amendment or Fourteenth Amendme ...
can be traced to his influential 1893 article, "The Origin and Scope of American Constitutional Law." Thayer argued that statutes should be invalidated only if their unconstitutionality is "so clear that it is not open to rational question."
Justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (March 8, 1841 – March 6, 1935) was an American jurist and legal scholar who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1902 to 1932.Holmes was Acting Chief Justice of the Un ...
, a student of Thayer's, articulated a version of what would become rational basis review in his canonical dissent in ''
Lochner v. New York'', arguing that "the word 'liberty' in the 14th Amendment is perverted when it is held to prevent the natural outcome of a dominant opinion, unless it can be said that a rational and fair man necessarily would admit that the statute proposed would infringe fundamental principles as they have been understood by the traditions of our people and our law."
Works
*''Legal Essays'' BiblioBazaar, 2010,
*''A Preliminary Treatise on Evidence at the Common Law'', BiblioLife, 2015,
Notes
References
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External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Thayer, James Bradley
1831 births
1902 deaths
People from Haverhill, Massachusetts
American legal scholars
Harvard Law School alumni
Massachusetts lawyers
Harvard Law School faculty
Harvard College alumni