John Bouvier

Life John Bouvier was born in 1787 in Codognan, France, in the department du Gard, to Jean Bouvier (1760–1803) and Marie Benezet (1760–1823). They were members of the Quakers. John Bouvier was educated in Nimes.

In 1802, Jean and Marie Bouvier, John Bouvier, and his brother Daniel emigrated to America and settled in Philadelphia.

He was best known, however, for his legal writings. Having himself experienced the difficulty of studying treatises based on British laws that no longer applied to the United States, Bouvier wrote his own American law dictionary, Law Dictionary Adapted to the Constitution and Laws of the United States of America and of the Several States of the American Union (1839). and by other jurists including Chancellor James Kent of the New York Supreme Court and Justice Joseph Story of the United States Supreme Court. Bouvier himself revised and published new editions in 1843 and 1848. After his death, it continued to be updated and published, and was retitled Bouvier's Law Dictionary by Francis Rawle in 1897. Bouvier also published an edition of Matthew Bacon's Abridgment of the Law (10 volumes, 1842–1846), and a compendium of American law entitled The Institutes of American Law (4 volumes, 1851) that outlined legal principles such as bailment, contracts, and property.

Bouvier died on November 18, 1851, a week after being "stricken with apoplexy" while working at his office. He is buried at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia.