born 1726, Elizabeth City county, Va.
died June 8, 1806, Richmond, Va., U.S.
U.S. jurist and statesman.
Admitted to the bar in 1746, he was a member (1754–55, 1758–68) and clerk (1769–75) of the Virginia House of Thomas Jefferson . At the College of William and Mary (1779–89) he became the first professor of law in the U.S.; among his pupils was John Marshall . A delegate to the {{link=Continental Congress">Continental Congress , he signed the Declaration of Independence . In 1776 he was appointed, with Jefferson and two others, to revise the laws of Virginia. As a chancery judge (1778–1806), he asserted, in Commonwealth v. Caton (1782), the power of courts to refuse to enforce unconstitutional laws. He was a member of the Constitutional Convention (1787) and of the Virginia convention (1788) that ratified the Constitution of the United States .