Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 04.pdf/82

 The Supreme Court of Georgia.

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THE SUPREME COURT OF GEORGIA. By Walter B. Hill, of the Macon {Ga.) Bar. II. HENRY KENT McCAY had an in tellect of mathematical precision in its operations. He was a devoted student of law, and is regarded as one of the ablest judges that ever occupied the Georgia bench. After his resignation, succeeded by several years' practice of his profession, he was urged upon the President for the appointment of District Judge for the Northern District of Georgia. While the nomination was pend ing, Judge McCay visited Washington, and was introduced to Mr. Brewster, AttorneyGeneral. Afterwards some friends of Judge McCay called upon Mr. Brewster with the purpose of submitting to him some evidence of the professional and judicial qualities of their candidate. The Attorney-General stopped them. " I have met Judge McCay," said he, "and I have seen in his face the whiskey of the law." The idea of the dis tinguished law officer of the Government seemed to be that devotion to legal science would impress itself upon the countenance. Wordsworth had a kindred thought, when, describing the Highland maid who haunted glen and brook, he wrote "Beauty, born of murmuring sound, shall pass into her face." Who has not fancied that he has read in the faces of great lawyers and judges the signs of devotion to the alluring beverage of which the Attorney-General spoke? Judge McCay was appointed to the judge ship of the Federal Court, succeeding Hon. John Erskine, who retired at the age of seventy, " full of years and honors," having administered the law so well during times that tried men's souls as to win the approval of all classes of citizens. Judge McCay held this office until his death. The most notable 9

case which came before him was that of Weil v. Calhoun, Ordinary (25 Fed. Rep. 865), in which the anti-prohibitionists, de feated in the local option election in Atlanta, endeavored to obtain an injunction against the declaration by the State officers of the result of the election, upon the ground that the statute under which the election was held was unconstitutional in that it failed to provide compensation for the loss of money invested in a brewery prior to the passage of the act. Judge McCay's decision overruling this point, anticipated by several years the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States on the same subject. Osborne A. Lochrane. Chief-Justice Lochrane was a native of Ireland, and at the age of twenty was a clerk on a meagre salary in a store at Athens, Georgia. But the republic is opportunity. He lived to fill the highest position on the bench of his adopted State, and to occupy the far more lucrative post of general counsel for the Pullman Car Company. He was a man of most genial nature. Charles Phillips has said of Curran that he was a " convivial deity." So was Judge Lochrane. The savoir /aire and savoir vivre were united in him with such sagacity and strength of in tellect that success seemed to champion him as a favorite son. As usual in such cases, your solid man (solid and stolid! ) descanted on the showy and attractive qualities of his person and manner as the whole explanation of his easy success. But Judge Lochrane sustained himself on the bench and at the bar in a way which proved the incorrectness of such narrow criticism. It was a marked type of " conversion " which he exhibited in later years, when uniting himself with an