John Henry Wigmore (1863–1943) was an American lawyer and legal scholar known for his expertise in the law of evidence and for his influential scholarship.

Following his undergraduate work, he returned to San Francisco briefly, but then moved back to Cambridge to attend Harvard Law School where he received his LL.B.

[2] Following law school, Wigmore's parents expected him to return to San Francisco to run the family business.

Wigmore married Emma Hunt Vogl (b. July 26, 1860, d. 1943) of Cambridge,[3] whom he had met during law school, in September 1889.

[5][6] In 1889, Wigmore was recruited as a foreign advisor to Meiji period Empire of Japan, and was assigned to teach law at Keio University in Tokyo.

Once he arrived in Tokyo he "came under the spell of what is called Comparative Law",[7] although his interest pre-dated his experiences in Japan.

In 1906, Wigmore helped establish the Northwestern University Law Review, which was a faculty-run publication in the early days.

[15] During his career at Northwestern, Wigmore "transformed a relatively modest institution into one of the leading law schools in the United States.

Following the United States’ declaration of war on Germany, Wigmore was activated to duty as a major serving with the Judge Advocate General's Office in Washington DC.

"[24] Following his military service, Wigmore's preferred mode of address became "Colonel" and remained so for the rest of his life.

[25] In examining his life's work, one biographer calculated that "[t]he sheer magnitude of [his] achievement is [...] more than 18 feet of shelf space or an entire section of standard library shelving.

"[26] In 1904 Wigmore began publication of his most famous work, a treatise that would serve as an encyclopedic survey of the development of the law of evidence.

[30] Wigmore's peers called the Treatise "one of the greatest intellectual feats in law-writing of any age or any country.