Thomas Ruffin

His decisions' influence on the developing jurisprudence of the states then known as the Southwest (Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi), settled by emigrating North Carolinians in large numbers, made Ruffin a celebrated figure at home.

Public veneration of the "stern prophet," as Ruffin was called, preserved his court from destruction by populist politicians.

Together, Justice William Gaston and Ruffin, whom his colleagues elected Chief Justice in 1833 (by a coin toss, according to a popular but probably apocryphal account), dominated their less-talented brother judges, rendering treatise-like opinions that inspired one contemporary to exclaim: "No State of the Union .

His home after the end of the American Civil War until he died in 1870, the Ruffin-Roulhac House at Hillsborough, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.

[7][8] In addition to his legal and political career, Ruffin was an innovative farmer and was president of the state's Agricultural Society from 1854 to 1860.

A statue of Ruffin once stood at the North Carolina Court of Appeals building in Raleigh but was removed in 2020.