BINNEY, HORACE American lawyer, was born in Philadelphia, Pa., on Jan. 4, 1780. He graduated at Harvard college in 1797 and then studied law in the office of Jared Ingersoll (1749-1822), who was attorney general of Penn sylvania. Binney was admitted to the bar in Philadelphia in 1800. He served in the Pennsylvania legislature from 1806-07. His most famous case, Bidal v. Girard's Executors, in which he was unsuccessfully opposed by Daniel Webster, greatly influenced the interpretation of the law of charities. During the Civil War he issued three pamphlets (1861, 1862 and 1865), justifying Abraham Lincoln in his suspension of the writ of habeas corpus.
See the Life of Horace Binney (Philadelphia, 1903), by his grandson, C. C. Binney.