an English barrister and miscellaneous writer. Dawes was a barrister of the Inner Temple. He left the bar and lived quietly at Clifford's Inn for the last thirty-six years of his life. Dawes took the Whig side on the American War of Independence, and the law of libel; but defended William Blackstone against Jeremy Bentham, had doubts as to abolishing tests, and held that philosophical truth was beyond reach. He wrote many treatises on legal and governmental issues.
