Law Miscellanies is a collection of essays on federal state law, judgments of the U.S. Supreme Court, Pennsylvania law and the role of English law in the American legal system. In A History of the American Bar, Charles Warren says it is one of four early American general works on the Common Law that "showed genuine scientific thought and research and have remained of more or less permanent value in American legal literature" (335-336). Brackenridge [1748-1816] was a lawyer, editor and civic leader who founded the first newspaper in western Pennsylvania, The Pittsburgh Gazette, now the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and the Pittsburgh Academy, now the University of Pittsburgh. He was a justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court from 1800 to 1816.