Male

January 28, 1802

June 19, 1890

Boston, MA

Washington, District of Columbia

Harriet Booth Loring (1829)

Edward Greely Loring was the son of Edward and Francis (Greely) Loring. He practiced law for several years in Boston and was a partner of the noted educator and fellow Law School graduate Horace Mann.

During his time on the Probate Court in Boston, Loring served as the judge in the famous Anthony Burns case. Burns was a fugitive slave who had escaped to freedom in Massachusetts. He was arrested on May 24, 1854 after he was found by his owner in Boston. According to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Burns had to be returned to his master Colonel Charles F. Suttle of Alexandria, VA. Boston citizens attempted to raise funds to purchase Burns' freedom and his case was brought before Loring. Despite the intense anti-slavery feeling in Massachusetts, Loring ruled that Burns would be returned ...to his master in the South. He believed that it was part of his duty as a U.S. Commissioner to uphold the Constitution and Congressional Law. This decision would haunt him for the rest of his career in Massachusetts.

Abolitionist Wendell Phillips made the Burns case into a prominent affair and even incited a mob which marched to the courthouse where Burns was being held, killed the assistant Marshall and threatened Judge Loring's life. In addition, the Massachusetts legislature brought Loring to trial. Richard Henry Dana, Jr. the distinguished lawyer who attempted to help Burns, testified for Loring at his trial and argued that Loring had simply maintained his duties as a holder of a federal office.

Conversely, Wendell Phillips testified against Loring, and relied on theories of states' rights to win his case. However, Governor Henry J. Gardner refused to execute the demand of the legislature to remove Loring from his position, a decision that cost him his reelection in 1857. Consequently, a new governor came into office in 1858. Loring lost his position when the probate judgeships were abolished and consolidated with the courts of insolvency. This consolidation of the Probate Court and the Courts of Insolvency was partly to get Loring out of office, and led to a major restructuring of the Massachusetts court system.

The case of Judge Loring was the basis of the establishment of the Superior Court of Massachusetts, which was formed in 1859 to replace the Court of Common Pleas and the Superior Court of Suffolk County. The Burns decision was also instrumental in preventing Loring from obtaining a full professorship at Harvard, for the Massachusetts Senate was then a part of the Harvard Board of Overseers. Loring had been a lecturer at the Dane Law School from 1852 to 1855 as well as on the committee to revise the statutes of the law school, but the overwhelming negative reaction against his decision hindered his teaching prospects at Harvard.

The difficulties Loring experienced over the Burns decision made him a hero in the South and President Buchanan decided to name him to the Court of Claims in Washington, D.C. in 1858. He served until he retired from public life in 1877.
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1821-1823

Graduated from Harvard College in 1821.

Lawyer; Political Office

1824

Commissioner 1841

State Representative (MA) 1836-1838

Judge of Probate (Suffolk County, MA) 1847-1854
Judge of the Court of Claims (Washington) 1858-1877
Presiding Judge of the Court of Claims (Washington) 1858-1863

Litchfield Eagle, October 7, 1822.

Litchfield Eagle, October 6, 1823.

Catalogue of the Litchfield Law School Hartford, CT: Press of Case, Tiffany and Company, 1849.

Dimond, Alan J. The Superior Court of Masachusetts, Its Origin and Development. Little, Brown & Co., 1960.

Bennett, Marion T. The United States Court of Claims: A History, Part I. Washington, DC: The Committee of the Bicentennial of Independence and the Constitution of the Judicial Conference of the United States, 1976.