1783-1853, American legal writer, b. Newburyport, Mass. A member of the Maine bar, he won a high reputation for legal scholarship early in his career. With the admission (1820) of Maine as a state, he was elected to a term in the legislature and was appointed reporter of the Maine supreme court. In 1833 he resigned this position and accepted the invitation of Joseph Story to become a professor of law at Harvard. Much of the excellence of Harvard Law School is attributed to these two men. Greenleaf's Treatise on the Law of Evidence (3 vol., 1842-53) for many years was the standard American work on the subject. Another text used for many years was his revision (5 vol., 1849-50) of William Cruise's Digest of the Law of Real Property.
