November 15, 2005
The Golden Age of Jurisprudence Posted by Frederic D. Schwarz at 10:25 AM EST Being a judge wasn’t always a glamorous job. Denis Tilden Lynch, in his 1929 biography of Martin Van Buren (An Epoch and a Man), describes the conditions in rural New York in the early nineteenth century, when Van Buren was starting out as a lawyer: “Minor actions were tried before justices of the peace, who generally held court in a tavern; and here the blindfolded goddess functioned in most primitive fashion. . . . A bottle of whiskey was usually on the table of counsel ‘to be used as the trial progressed, whenever it should be necessary to solve an intricate question.’ Levi Beardsley, a distinguished counsel of the day, and the one-time President of the New York State Senate . . . recalls a sitting where ‘a crowd assembled, and as usual, took sides with the parties; but in this instance, were nearly unanimous for one of the parties, and in opposition to the justice, who, they thought, favored the wrong party.’ During the trial, some of the spectators, who were drinking ‘freely at the bar of the county tavern,’ resolved that they would show their contempt for judicial authority in a manner to make the judge the laughing stock of the county if he rendered a verdict in keeping with his unjust rulings. He did. “After court adjourned, those who had drunk long and copiously formed a circle around his honor, and ‘commenced urinating on him from every direction.’ When this unpopular judge realized what was happening to him [our editor, Richard F. Snow, asks: “How long could this have taken?”] ‘he set up an outcry and escaped from the crowd, but brought actions of assault and battery against the perpetrators, which in due time the defendants settled, by paying costs and making suitable amends to the distinguished jurist.’”
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