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The Green Bag Volume XXII

April, 1910

Number 4

Chief Justice Baldwin’s Retirement HE personnel of the Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut has under gone important changes. Chief Justice Simeon E. Baldwin was retired in accord ance with the constitutional provision

or that he be sent to Congress.

The

newspapers have thought that he would make a splendid Democratic candidate for Governor. But doubts are expressed

that no judge shall hold oﬂice after arriv

whether his election could be hoped for in a state overwhelmingly Republican.

ing at the age of seventy. He was succeeded Feb. 7 by Chief Justice

He has said that he is not a candidate for any political oﬁice:——

Frederic B. Hall of Bridgeport.

The

Vacancy occasioned by Judge Baldwin’s retirement was ﬁlled by the elevation to the Supreme bench of Judge Silas A. Robinson of the Superior Court. Justice Robinson, after six months of service,

will also have to retire on account of the age limit. Judge Baldwin's retirement has been marked as is not often the case when the leader of a state judiciary leaves the bench by general recognition, from all

"The next campaign is a long way ahead. I follow Sydney Smith’s philosophy and take short views of life. I don't cross bridges until I come to them. My present view ahead is to write a book, and not to hurry myself in doing it."

Ex-Chief Justice Baldwin was the chief guest of honor at a banquet of the Connecticut State Bar Association in New Haven on Feb. 7, the date of

Chief Justice Hall's entrance upon his new duties. The object of the dinner

parts of the state, of the loss the Com monwealth has thus sustained and of his many virtues of character and per sonality. He evidently has the aﬂec

was also to recognize in a suitable manner the promotion of the other two

tion of the people not less than of the bar. As he is in the full vigor of an

ovation. He said that he had spent the best years of his life on the bench,

indomitable energy and an admirable

for while he had not gone on the Supreme

Justices. Judge Baldwin was given a hearty

mental endowment, there has been a

Court bench until he was ﬁfty-two years

general disposition to complain of the operation of the constitutional age limit

old, a man in the legal profession, in his

under circumstances which it was never designed to meet.

Now that Judge

Baldwin is in private life, he is deemed

eligible for all sorts of honors.

opinion, did not do his best work until he was over ﬁfty. Some one here drew forth a rousing cheer by saying, “Not until seventy.”

It has

“I lose power,” he continued, “but I

been proposed that he be made Governor,

gain freedom and leisure, not leisure