John Elihu Hall (1783–1829), legal author and editor, attended the University of Pennsylvania and then the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) before returning to his native Philadelphia in 1804 to read law under Joseph Hopkinson. Admitted to the bar the following year, he moved to Baltimore and opened a law practice. Hall soon established the American Law Journal and Miscellaneous Repertory (1808–17; Sowerby, description begins E. Millicent Sowerby, comp., Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, 1952–59, 5 vols. description ends no. 2098; Poor, Jefferson’s Library description begins Nathaniel P. Poor, Catalogue. President Jefferson’s Library [1829] description ends , 10 [no. 600]), which printed reports of significant cases, recent state statutes, translations of foreign jurisprudence, and biographical essays. He also wrote notable legal treatises on the admiralty court, maritime loans, and Maryland law, as well as literary and biographical works. Hall opposed war in 1812 and was among those badly injured that July when he sought to defend Federalist publisher Alexander C. Hanson from a Baltimore mob. In 1813 Hall was admitted to the bar of the United States Supreme Court, and the following year he became a member of the American Philosophical Society. He returned to Philadelphia and there edited the Port Folio magazine from 1816 until its demise in 1827. Hall continued to publish other works as well, including a short-lived Journal of Jurisprudence in 1821. TJ subscribed to all three of Hall’s journals (ANB description begins John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, 1999, 24 vols. description ends ; DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ; Baltimore North American and Mercantile Daily Advertiser, 18 May 1808; Philadelphia Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser, 29 Aug. 1812; APS description begins American Philosophical Society description ends , Minutes, 21 Jan. 1814 [MS in PPAmP]; Peter Stein, “The Attraction of the Civil Law in Post-Revolutionary America,” Virginia Law Review 52 [1966]: 413–5; TJ to Harrison Hall, 6 Aug. 1817, 3 Jan. 1826; TJ to John E. Hall, 8 Aug. 1821; Philadelphia National Gazette and Literary Register, 13 June 1829).

The enclosed issue of Hall’s journal published opinions by John Tyler and John Marshall (printed above at 4 Dec. 1811) dismissing livingston v. jefferson on jurisdictional grounds. In a subsequent number Hall wrote of the Batture Sainte Marie controversy that “when we come to publish Mr Jefferson’s defence—which, in justice, we are bound to do, and by his politeness have been permitted to do,—we shall endeavour to show that the ground—like the alluvion which is the subject of dispute,—is easily washed away.” His 1814 reissue of Jefferson’s Proceedings description begins Thomas Jefferson, The Proceedings of the Government of the United States, in maintaining The Public Right to the Beach of the Missisipi, Adjacent to New-Orleans, against the Intrusion of Edward Livingston. prepared for the use of counsel, by Thomas Jefferson, New York, 1812; Sowerby, nos. 3501, 3508; Poor, Jefferson’s Library, 10 (no. 604) description ends (a work discussed above at 31 July 1810) incorporated “corrections and additional Notes, by the Author” (American Law Journal 4 [1813]: 78–87, 517–62; 5 [1814]: ix–xiv, 1–91).