[1] He was elected by the legislature as presiding judge of the Court of Common Pleas ninth circuit in 1839.
[4] Reed was elected by the legislature to the Ohio Supreme Court in 1842 to a seven-year term to replace Frederick Grimke, resigned.
Nineteenth-century authors assessed Reed as learned and wise, but they also alluded to personal vices which led to an early death: He was a man of marked ability, and had a clear comprehension of the law.
He frequently dissented from the majority and more good sound law may be found in his dissenting opinions than in the majority opinion.Judge Reed was a man of elegant literary attainments, scholarly, but an erratic genius, whose whole-souled generosity and liberality proved his ruin.
After two or three years practice in San Francisco, California, he fell victim to that vice which has proved a destroyer of so many men.