Wharton was descended from an accomplished
Quaker family in
Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, although his father had become an Episcopalian in 1812. Born in 1820, Wharton graduated from
Yale in 1839, read law in his father's office, and was admitted to the bar in 1843. He became prominent in Pennsylvania politics as a
Democrat. He served as assistant attorney-general in 1845. In Philadelphia, he edited the
North American and United States Gazette. From 1856 to 1863, he was a professor of English, History, and Literature at
Kenyon College in
Gambier, Ohio. Wharton married Sidney Paul in 1852. After her death, he remarried in 1860 to Helen Elizabeth Ashhurst, with whom he had two daughters. Wharton took orders in the
Protestant Episcopal Church in 1862, and was the rector of St. Paul's Church,
Brookline, Massachusetts from 1863 to 1869. Wharton was a "
broad churchman" and was deeply interested in the
hymnology of the Episcopal church. Wharton was also interested in
Christian apologetics, and he wrote an essay on the relationship between apologetics and jurisprudence that was published in
The Princeton Review in 1878. From 1871 to 1881, he taught ecclesiastical polity and canon law in the Protestant Episcopal Theological School at
Cambridge, Massachusetts, and during this time he lectured on the conflict of laws at
Boston University. For two years thereafter Wharton traveled in Europe. He received the degree of LL.D. from the
University of Edinburgh in 1883. After two years in Philadelphia Wharton moved to
Washington, DC, where he was lecturer on criminal law (1885–1886) and then professor of
criminal law (1886–1888) at
Columbian (now George Washington) University. He authored the doctrine in
criminal law (Wharton's Rule of Concert of Action) that to form a
conspiracy takes one more person than is necessary to commit the crime. (For example, it takes two people to gamble. Therefore, two people gambling cannot be guilty of conspiracy to gamble, though three can.) From 1885 to 1888, Wharton was solicitor (or examiner of claims) of the
Department of State. During the last two years of his life, Wharton amassed
American Revolutionary War diplomatic correspondence and edited this material into a six volume work, published in 1889, the year of his death. This edition (authorized by Congress) of the
Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States (6 vols, 1889, ed. by
John Bassett Moore) superseded
Jared Sparks's compilation. In recognition of his accomplishments in international law, Wharton was elected to the
Institute of International Law. Wharton's published views on U.S.
citizenship, found in his treatises on
Conflict of Laws (1881) and on the
International Law of the United States (1887), are cited by the
Solicitor General in the United States Government's 2026
Supreme Court brief in defense of
President Trump's
Executive Order attempting to limit the principle of
birthright citizenship. ==Publications==