Paul Dudley (jurist)

Paul Dudley (September 3, 1675 – January 25, 1751), Attorney-General of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, was the son of colonial governor Joseph Dudley and grandson of one of the colony's founders, Thomas Dudley.

Dudley was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts in 1675. After graduating from the Roxbury Latin School and then, at the age of 15, from Harvard in 1690, he studied law at the Temple in London, and became Attorney General of Massachusetts from 1702 to 1718. He was associate justice of the province's highest court, the Superior Court of Judicature, from 1718 to 1745, and chief justice from 1745 until his death in January 1751.

He was a member of the Royal Society (London), to whose Transactions he contributed several valuable papers on the natural history of New England, as well as the founder of the Dudleian lectures on religion at Harvard University. Dudley was an investor in the Equivalent Lands. Along with his brother, William, he was the first proprietor and namesake of Dudley, Massachusetts.

Dudley died in Roxbury, and is buried in the Eliot Burying Ground next to his father and grandfather.

References

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: 

Legal offices
Preceded by Samuel Sewall	Associate Justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature 1718–1745	Succeeded by Nathaniel Hubbard
Preceded by Benjamin Lynde, Sr.	Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature 1745–1752	Succeeded by Stephen Sewall