Editing Increase Sumner (section)

==Legal career==
After graduating from Harvard, Sumner took charge of the Roxbury school, where he taught for two years while he apprenticed law under Samuel Quincy, the provincial solicitor general. He sought to study under [[John Adams]], but the latter had enough students. Adams wrote that Sumner "was a promising genius, and a studious and virtuous youth."<ref name=Bridgman82/> Sumner was [[Admission to the bar in the United States|admitted to the bar]] in 1770 and opened a law office in Roxbury that year.<ref name=S5>Sumner, p. 5</ref>

[[Image:John Hancock 1770.jpg|thumb|left|upright|[[John Hancock]] appointed Sumner to the [[Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court]]]]
Sumner was chosen a member of the [[Massachusetts Provincial Congress]] in 1776 where he represented the town of Roxbury.<ref name=Bridgman82/>  In 1777 he participated in a state convention to draft a new constitution, whose result was not adopted.<ref name=S10>Sumner, p. 10</ref><ref>Cushing, pp. 208–227</ref>  He continued to serve in the provincial congress until the [[Massachusetts Constitution|state constitution]] was adopted in 1780, when he was elected state senator for Suffolk County. This post he held for two years.<ref name=S10/>  In June 1782 he was elected to the [[Confederation Congress]] by the state legislature, replacing [[Timothy Danielson]], who resigned, but Sumner never actually took the seat. In August 1782 Governor [[John Hancock]] nominated him as an associate justice of the [[Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court]] to replace [[James Sullivan (governor)|James Sullivan]]. He accepted this position instead of the senate seat, and served from 1782 to 1797.<ref>Bridgman, p. 91</ref>  Details on his judicial record are sparse, in part because few official court records survive from the time, and decisions were usually oral (the court did not begin formal record keeping with written decisions until 1805).<ref>Massachusetts Bar Association, pp. 22–23</ref> Sumner did take detailed notes of many of the cases he heard; these notes, preserved at the [[Massachusetts Historical Society]], now form a valuable repository of early Massachusetts judicial history.<ref>Edwards, p. 180</ref><ref>Hart, p. 4:45</ref>

The period when he served in the Supreme Judicial Court included a time of great turmoil in Massachusetts. Following the [[American Revolutionary War]] the value of the paper currency then in circulation fell significantly leaving many citizens in financial difficulties. The administration of [[James Bowdoin]] in 1786 raised taxes to pay the public debt which had run up during the war, and stepped up collection of back taxes. These economic pressures led to outbreaks of civil unrest which culminated in [[Shays' Rebellion]], an uprising in central and western Massachusetts lasting from 1786 to 1787. Sumner sat on the criminal cases in which participants of the rebellion were tried.  Many participants were pardoned, but eighteen were convicted and sentenced to death. Most of these sentences were commuted; two men were hanged.<ref>Richards, pp. 38–41</ref><ref>Massachusetts SJC Historical Society, pp. 115–116</ref>

Sumner sat on the court when it heard the appeals in the [[Quock Walker]] cases in 1783, concerning a former slave who was seeking confirmation of his freedom. A ruling in one of these cases confirmed that the state constitution had effectively abolished [[Slavery in the United States|slavery]].<ref>Higginbotham, pp. 93–95</ref> In 1785 he was chosen by the legislature to sit on a committee which revised the laws of the state, to modernize them and remove references to [[Kingdom of Great Britain|British authority]].<ref>Sumner, p. 13</ref><ref>Amory, pp. 124–126</ref> In 1789 he was a member of the state convention that met to ratify the [[United States Constitution]], in which he explained to the convention the meaning and importance of ''[[habeas corpus]]''.<ref>Maier, p. 189</ref> He was elected a Fellow of the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]] in 1791.<ref name=AAAS>{{cite web|title=Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter S|url=http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterS.pdf|publisher=American Academy of Arts and Sciences|access-date=July 28, 2014}}</ref>