John Jervis

Sir John Jervis, PC (12 January 1802 – 1 November 1856) was an English lawyer, law reformer and Attorney General in the administration of Lord John Russell. He subsequently became a judge and enjoyed a career as a robust but intelligent and innovative jurist, a career cut short by his early and sudden death. Early life The son of Thomas Jervis, he was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, though he did not graduate, apparently preferring to take a commission as an officer in the British Army. However, after two years he returned to study law being called to the bar by the Middle Temple in 1824. Jervis followed his father onto the Oxford circuit and the Chester and north Wales circuit and built a substantial practice, being appointed a postman of the Court of Exchequer. He was offered the distinction of Queen's Counsel in 1837 but, aspiring to a political career, he declined, managing to obtain a patent of precedence instead. Legal author (1826–1832) Between 1826 and 1832, Jervis collaborated in law reporting with Charles John Crompton (Crompton & Jervis) and was also the co-reporter in Younge & Jervis. Jervis's Office and Duties of Coroners (1829) remains the leading practitioners' text on coroners and inquests with a 13th edition due in late 2007. He undertook a major rewrite of Archbold Criminal Pleading, Evidence and Practice to produce the 4th edition (1831) and went on to edit the 5th to 8th editions. Jervis went on to author four editions of All the Rules of the Courts of King's Bench and Common Pleas and Exchequer (1832–1839) and established his reputation as a leading scholar of procedure so that in 1850 he was appointed chair of a commission to inquire into practice and procedure at the common law courts, alongside James Shaw Willes and George Wilshere, 1st Baron Bramwell. The commission's findings led to the Common Law Procedure Acts 1852 and 1854 (15 & 16 Vict. c. 76 and 17 & 18 Vict. c. 135) which started the process of rationalising the English courts, until then still hampered by much medieval practice, and creating the modern system.