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 The Green Bag

Vol. II. No. 7.

BOSTON.

July, 1890.

THE NEW YORK COURT OF APPEALS.

PART I.

By Irving Browne.

HE Court of Appeals of the State of New York is unquestionably the most influential of all the State courts of this country. The variety, novelty, and importance of the business brought before it, and the remark able abilities of its long line of judges have given it this reputation. Other courts have had some judges of equal powers; but the amounts at stake, and the general importance of its litigation, coming from the commercial metropolis, and concerning the agricultural and manufacturing interests of the most populous of the States, have made the judgments of this court the most interesting of any, independently of the question of judicial talents. Its history should be narrated in two divisions, the line of separation being the reorganization of the court in 1870.

The judicial machinery of the State of New York was entirely remodelled by the Constitution of 1846. At that time, as or ganized under the Constitution of 1823, the Supreme Court was partitioned into eight trial circuits, with one judge to each. From these an appeal lay to three other judges, who sat for the whole State. From these lay an appeal to the Court for the Correction of Errors, which consisted of the Senate, the Chancellor, and the three Supreme Court judges. There was also the Court of Chancery, made famous as the fountain of equity learning in this country by Kent and Walworth. I have said in another place, and it is well to repeat : "The chief-justices of the Supreme Court during this period were John Savage, Samuel Nelson, Greene C. Bronson, and Samuel Beardsley; and the associate justices were Jacob Sutherland, John Woodworth, William L. Marcy, Samuel Nelson, Greene C. Bronson, Esek Cowen, Samuel Beardsley, Freeborn G. Jewett, Frederick Whittlesey, Thomas McKissock. It would be difficult to parallel these names, for public virtue, professional learning, and successful administration of the law, in the history of any other community. The name of Marcy is of national reputation, as Senator of the United States and Secretary of State; a man of the highest quality of native powers, our State recognizes him as perhaps the greatest of her statesmen. Judge Nelson served his country, in our State and on the Federal Supreme bench, for half a century; a man of leonine strength and sagacity. The reputation of Judge Cowen is also a national possession. It is doubtful that any other State judge, excepting Kent and Shaw, is so well and widely known throughout the country. He possessed great native acuteness, displayed an unparalleled industry, and acquired prodigious learning. His treatise on Justices' Courts and his notes on Phillips' Evidence, written in association with Nicholas Hill, stand on the shelves of nearly every lawyer in the land, — a mine of professional learning. Judge Bronson was a man of marvellous brilliancy and power. Seldom has any court been composed of three such legal giants as Nelson, Cowen, and Bronson, and seldom 37