Home > West's Encyclopedia of American Law > King, Edward

Edward King was a lawyer whose 1844 nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court failed because of political animosity between Congress and the president who proposed him.

King was born January 31, 1794, in Philadelphia. He was well educated and studied law under the prominent Pennsylvania lawyer Charles Chauncey. He was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1816 and soon after entered politics, first as a Federalist and then as a Democrat. Before he was thirty years old, he had established himself as a leader of the DEMOCRATIC PARTY in Pennsylvania.

King became clerk of the Philadelphia orphans' court in 1824. The following year, he was named president judge of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. He was a highly respected jurist who did more to establish Pennsylvania's EQUITY courts than...