PIIILLIPS, Willard, lawyer, born in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, 19 December. 1784; died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 9 September, 1873. He was graduated at Harvard in 1810, and remained connected with the university until 181.5 as a tutor first in Latin, and then in arithmetic and natural philosophy. Meanwhile he studied law with William Sullivan, and after admission to the bar in Boston, soon became eminent in his profession. In 1825-'6 he was a member of the legislature, and in 1839 he was made judge of probate for Suffolk county, which office he held until 1847. Besides the discharge of his duties as judge, he was employed in 1837-'41 under a legislative commission to himself and others in reducing the laws of crimes and punishments to a systematic code, and, although the report was never adopted in Massachusetts, the work has had a material influence on legislation and the administration of criminal law. In 1845 he retired from legal practice, and from 1843 until his death he was president of the New England mutual life insurance company. Mr. Phillips became a contributor to the " General Repository and Review " in 1812, and had oversight of the " North American Review" during the second year of its existence, continuing as one of its contributors until 1834. For several years he also had editorial control of the "American Jurist." In 1812 he issued "An Appeal to the Public Spirit of the Federalists and the Good Sense of the Democrats," designed to promote the war spirit in New England, and with Edward Pickering he edited the first and second American editions of Collyer's "Law of Partnership" (Boston, 1834-'9), and the first eight volumes of Pickering's "Reports" (1824). His own works are "Treatise on the Law of Insurance" (1823); "Manual of Political Economy" (1828) ; "The Law of Patents for Inventions, including the Remedies and Legal Proceedings in Relation to Patent Rights" (1837) ; "The Inventor's Guide " (1837) ; and "Protection and Free-Trade" (1850).