John Guest (judge)

{{Short description|American judge}}

{{More citations needed|date=January 2024}}

File:Writ 1702.jpg signed by Guest in 1702 as chief justice in the Province of Pennsylvania]]

John Guest (died 8 September 1707) was a Chief Justice of the provincial Pennsylvania Supreme Court.{{cite journal |last1=Wolf |first1=Edwin |title=The Library of a Philadelphia Judge, 1708 |journal=The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography |date=April 1959 |volume=83 |issue=2 |pages=180-191 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20089180 |access-date=9 January 2024}}

Guest was born in England, where he received a university education, and probably engaged in the practice of law before coming to Pennsylvania. Shortly after his arrival in Philadelphia in 1701, he was commissioned by William Penn as chief justice of the supreme court of Pennsylvania and presiding judge of the courts of common pleas, quarter sessions, and the orphans' court of the city and county of Philadelphia. He served as chief justice in 1701, 1702, and 1705, as an associate justice in the same court in 1704, and as presiding judge of the other courts from 1701 till 1706. In July 1701, he was invited by Penn to a seat in his council, of which he remained a member until his death.