Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 05.pdf/458

 Cross-Examination as an Art.

423

CROSS-EXAMINATION AS AN ART. BY A. OAKEY HALL. VERY lawyer of only five years'.practice Of those in England whom I found to has discovered what an art cross-exam be what I may term professors of the art, ination has become, — to rank with sculp I mention George Lewis, who confessedly ture and painting. May not the tools of heads his profession as solicitor; Attorneythe expert cross-examiner be figuratively de Generals Webster and Sir Charles Russell; scribed as the mallet of manner giving the Solicitor-General Sir Edward Clark, and a adroit stroke; the chisels of rhetoric or of battalion of Q. C.'s, who by promotion from tone of voice for delicate incisions? Must the Lord Chancellor, cross-examine in what not the touches of the cross-examiner be William Black the novelist in his popular not less delicate than those of a Praxiteles romance entitles " In Silk Attire," and who or a Powers? Does he not before exercis wear wigs such as covered — I can hardly ing his art of cross-examination and all use the word " adorned " — the brows of during the direct examination carefully scan two King Henries of the bar, Erskine and and study the witness produced in the aspect Brougham. While I was a student in the Harvard Law of a model? Has he not in such a study — rápidas it must necessarily be — borne in School under Greenleaf and Story, whose mind maxims of Lavater and Spurzheim, as memories and learning have worthily graced the sculptor remembers many of Canova? brilliant successors, I often and in company For like the chiselling sculptor, the cross- with such classmates as Rutherfurd B. Hayes examiner knows that he must carefully bear and George Hoadley, both of whom became in mind the features and form of the model's eminent in public life — listened to and testimony, and carve these to his own ends, studied, in connection with Greenleafs fit — especially the features of his own theories ting chapter in his " Evidence," the artful cross-examinations of Rufus Choate, whose applied to the evidence given. During a dozen years of continuous service art is well " kept green " by his nephew as district attorney of New York City, and Joseph in New York. of a score of years in civil actions as counsel While afterward pursuing the study of for seven sheriffs in whose litigations fraud civil law in New Orleans, I had occasion to of debtors was examinable, I possessed hear cross-examinations of such advocates very fair opportunities of studying the art as John R. Grymes, Alfred Hennen, George of cross-examination as practised by bar- Eustis, — father of the Minister at Paris, leaders, who as against the people or as and who was afterward Chief-Justice of the retained by claimants against the sheriff State, — Thomas Slidell, and Judah P. Ben were generally employed. This gave oppor jamin, into whose brilliant eyes all suspicious tunity for testing the saying: "Fas est ab witnesses found it difficult to look when he hoste doceri." Seven years of a subsequent practised upon them his art that he master residence in London, while frequently attend fully knew, and which, when he became an ing its courts, furnished further opportunity English Q. C., stood him in great regard for studying cross-examination as an art from bench and bar and at all the Inns and as practised by eminent solicitors before and Temples. magistrates and by Q. C.'s in the Supreme At the New York Bar I had opportunities Court of Judicature, and in that best court of studying the cross-examination arts of Charles O'Conor, Ogden Hoffman, John ior testing the art, the Bankruptcy Court.