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DU PONCEAU, PETER S. (1760–1844)

Peter S. Du Ponceau arrived in America from France as Baron von Steuben's interpreter. Following service in the Revolution, he became a citizen of Pennsylvania where he was admitted to the bar in 1785. He defended the radical state CONSTITUTION of 1776 and was an ANTI-FEDERALIST, but as time passed he became a Jeffersonian Republican. He declined THOMAS JEFFERSON'S offer of the chief justiceship of Louisiana. Du Ponceau was a founder and provost of the Law Academy of Pennsylvania. Among his books were A Dissertation on the Nature and Extent of the Jurisdiction of the Courts of the United States (1824), in which he advocated a FEDERAL COMMON LAW, and A Brief View of the Constitution of the United States (1834), in which he sought a middle course between a consolidated government and STATES ' RIGHTS. In general he taught moderate nationalism and the supremacy of the union.