St. George Tucker (July 10, 1752 – November 10, 1827) was a Bermudian-born American lawyer, military officer and professor who taught law at the College of William & Mary.

Following the American Revolutionary War, Tucker supported the gradual emancipation of slaves, which he proposed to the state legislature in a pamphlet published in 1796.

[4] St. George's older brother Thomas Tudor Tucker migrated to Virginia in the 1760s after completing medical school in Scotland, and settled in South Carolina before the American Revolutionary War.

[11] Tucker joined his father and his brother Thomas in a business smuggling goods between the West Indies and the American colonies in Virginia and South Carolina.

[13] Tucker distinguished himself at the Battle of Guilford Court House, where he was wounded in the leg while trying to stop a fleeing Virginian soldier.

[13] At the Siege of Yorktown in 1781, an exploding shell wounded Tucker, who was serving as an interpreter for Governor and General Thomas Nelson Jr. and his French allies.

[16] Tucker resumed his fledgling legal career in Virginia after the Revolution's end in 1782, when the United States achieved independence.

[20] In Caton, Tucker argued for the courts' rights to exercise judicial review, based on the separation of powers doctrine.

[33] According to historian Clyde N. Wilson, Tucker's principles of states' rights and limited government would be prevailing ideas for him and other Jeffersonians for several generations.

[41][42] Judges and attorneys who practiced before the superior courts of Virginia for at least seven years would be eligible for an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.

[41][42] Tucker strongly believed that future attorneys needed a proper legal education before beginning to practice, and would sometimes even cover students' fees to keep them from dropping out.

[46] This combination of new requirements was the last straw for Tucker, who believed that the new duties demonstrated "perfect contempt" from the Board for the College's professors.

[49] Tucker also published a pamphlet under the name "Sylvestris",[50] proposing that the Louisiana Territory be considered for settlement by free blacks.

Tucker and the other appellate judges (all slaveholders) disagreed with Wythe's argument that blacks could be presumed free at birth (as were whites).

[66] Although Tucker was one of the most well-respected legal thinkers of his day, he would never be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States, quite possibly because there were already two Virginians (John Marshall and Bushrod Washington) serving there at the time.

His grandson, John Randolph Tucker (1823–1897), served as Virginia's attorney general, as well as United States Representative and Dean of Washington and Lee University School of Law.

[86] Tucker's proposal noted that census figures at the time showed that a large number of slaves in Virginia had been emancipated, stating that the commonwealth had more "free negroes and mulattoes .

.we were imposing on our fellow men, who differ in complexion from us, a slavery, ten thousand times more cruel than the utmost extremity of those grievances and oppressions, of which we complained.

[92][93] Members of Virginia's ruling class, including Tucker, were afraid of the changes emancipation would have on their society, possibly with events such as the Haitian Revolution in mind.

[100][101] After being freed under the plan, women born to slaves would be obligated to serve their former master's family until the age of 28, after which time they would receive $20, some clothes, and two blankets.

[102][103] In addition, black people would not be allowed to create a will; serve as a trustee, administrator, or executor; or have property held in trust for them.

One member sympathetic to Tucker's cause noted that "(s)uch is the force of prejudice that in the house of delegates, characters were found who voted against the letter and its enclosure lying on the table.

"[82] Tucker was severely disappointed by the reaction, and while he still lectured on the topic and distributed the Dissertation in various forms, he did not make any more proposals regarding emancipation to the Assembly.

[107][108] Despite its flaws - legal historian Paul Finkelman describes Tucker's plan as "simultaneously visionary, philanthropic, racist, vicious, utterly impractical, internally inconsistent, and hopelessly complex"[109] - modern scholars recognize the Dissertations significance as the first genuine effort by a Southerner to effect emancipation in his state.

He was a true academic intellectual who used his skills as a thinker and writer in an attempt, however futile, to stimulate a serious discussion about the problem of slavery in Virginia.

"[109] Historian Clyde N. Wilson says that "[p]erhaps the most important things about Tucker's essay for later times are the following: it shows the potential in the South for constructively addressing the most difficult issue in American society before the time when it became necessary to defend against outside control; and, it demonstrates that Tucker's state rights understanding of the Constitution is not merely a rationalization in defense of slavery.

[112] Tucker also felt that Blackstone's sympathy with the power of the Crown over that of Parliament would be a poor influence for a student of American legal principles.

[113] Therefore, Tucker wrote marginalia in his copy of Blackstone and read them to his classes, and added lectures on Virginian and United States federal law and comparing the American political system with its British counterpart.

[117] Blackstone's text was mostly arranged the same way as in the original version, but Tucker organized the appendixes to show what he felt the most important developments in American law were.

[121] The United States Supreme Court itself cited Tucker's Blackstone frequently, referring to it in over forty cases, many of them significant.