Search

The Online Encyclopedia and Dictionary

 
     
 

Encyclopedia

Dictionary

Quotes

 

Richard Peters

Richard Peters, Jr. (August 17, 1780-May 2, 1848) was the fourth reporter of decisions of the United States Supreme Court, serving from 1828 to 1843.

He was born in Belmont, Pennsylvania. When he took the post, he condensed the reports of his three predecessors, eliminating the arguments of counsel, annotations, and other material, thus reducing twenty-four volumes into six. His immediate predecessor Henry Wheaton sued, and the Supreme Court rejected Wheaton's claim to a common-law copyright in his own reports in the first landmark case in American copyright law, Wheaton v. Peters. The Court dismissed Peters in 1843 because of the questionable "accuracy and fidelity" of his reports and his having offended several of the justices. He died in Belmont, Pennsylvania.

The contents of this article are licensed from Wikipedia.org under the GNU Free Documentation License. How to see transparent copy