Atrocious Judges : Lives of Judges Infamous as Tools of Tyrants and Instruments of Oppression

29

He had been murdered by a body of insurgent peasants headed by Jack Straw, one of the leaders in Wat Tyler’s insurrection. —Ed.

30

Some of our federal judges would no doubt like very much to see this rule established among us. —Ed.

31

The persistence of Richard II. in the same arbitrary principles of which the advocacy cost Tresilian his life, caused his deposition a few years afterwards, as to which, Lord Campbell observes, —

“While we honor Lord Somers and the patriots who took the most active part in the revolution of 1688, by which a king was cashiered, hereditary right was disregarded, and a new dynasty was placed on the throne, we are apt to consider the kings of the house of Lancaster as usurpers, and those who sided with them as rebels. Yet there is great difficulty in justifying the deposition of James II., and condemning the deposition of Richard II. The latter sovereign, during a reign of above twenty years, had proved himself utterly unfit to govern the nation, and, after repeated attempts to control him, and promises on his part to submit to constitutional advice, he was still under the influence of worthless favorites, and was guilty of continued acts of tyranny and oppression; so that the nation, which, with singular patience, had often forgiven his misconduct from respect to the memory of his father and his grandfather, was now almost unanimously resolved to submit no longer to his rule.”

32

Fuller, in praising Fortescue and Markham, says, “These I may call two chief justices of the chief justices, for their signal integrity; for though the one of them favored the house of Lancaster, and the other of York, in the titles to the crown, both of them favored the house of Justice in matters betwixt party and party.”

33

A list by no means limited to England, but very much lengthened out in America. —Ed.

34

Some of our American advocates of constructive treasons have laid down the law much in the same spirit. —Ed.

35

It was, we may suppose, from this charge that Mr. Justice Curtis, of the Supreme Court of the United States, got the law retailed in his charge to the grand jury of the Massachusetts District, in consequence of which indictments were found against Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker for obstructing the execution of the fugitive slave act – on the ground that certain speeches of theirs in Faneuil Hall against that statute “referred to a purpose” and “incited to an act” of resistance to it, thereby making their expression of opinion criminal. —Ed.

36

The recent claim set up in America for legislative supremacy over conscience – a claim contended for by so many of our leading lawyers and divines – is not less blasphemous and outrageous than this claim of Henry VIII., and belongs to the same category. —Ed.

37

This would hardly be allowed by some of our American juridical deniers and deriders of the “higher law.” It is hard to distinguish a law (such as the fugitive slave act) which sets the moral sentiment at defiance, from a law that God shall not be God. —Ed.

38

One striking instance, among a thousand, both old and new, how little the so much vaunted decisions of courts virtually amount to. Decisions that are to stand, can only stand upon their own inherent rectitude and reasonableness, and not upon the authority of those who make them. —Ed.

39

Noy at this time was of the popular party. He afterwards went over to the court, and was made attorney general. —Ed.

40

Similar pretences of respect for law and popular rights often serve as preface here in America to judgments as atrocious as that of Chief Justice Hyde. —Ed.

41

This is the universal excuse for all sins, whether of omission or commission, on the part of courts who pay but little regard to Bishop Burnet’s sensible observation that a precedent against reason “signifies no more but that the like injustice has been done before.” —Ed.

42

Though the lawyers, both in England and America, have long since abandoned the pretence, so impudently maintained by Hyde, of a right in the executive authorities to imprison for contempt, into the ground and nature of which the courts had no right to inquire, they still claim for themselves and for one another – at least in Pennsylvania – a like right, and insist with the same unction upon the absolute necessity of trusting “the courts” in these matters, and of relying upon their “mercy.” See, in the Appendix, No. 3, the opinion of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, as delivered by Judge Black, of which the insolent conclusion was evidently borrowed from the above opinion of Chief Justice Hyde. —Ed.

43

This celebrated lawyer, who had succeeded Fleming as chief justice of the King’s Bench, had been, as well as Crewe, turned out of office after holding the place for three years, because he would not allow the government to interfere with his administration of justice. He was now the leader of the popular party in the House of Commons. —Ed.

44

We have had recent striking instances in America of the same thing in some of the “misconstructions” placed by judges on the laws in restraint of drunkenness and liquor selling. —Ed.

45

Like those given by several federal judges in support of the fugitive slave act. —Ed.

46

Noy had begun, like Brampston, a flaming patriot, but, like him and so many other lawyers, had been bought over to the side of power by the hope of promotion, and being made attorney general, had advised the issue of the writs for ship money. —Ed.

47

Cro. Car. 403. These forms are no longer used. The chief justice is now sworn in privately before the chancellor; and without any speechifying he enters the court and takes his place on the bench with the other judges. But in Scotland they still subject the new judge to trials of his sufficiency; while these are going on he is called lord probationer; and he might undoubtedly be plucked if the court should think fit.

48

This is exactly the sort of judges from whom we in America have so much to fear. —Ed.

49

We have seen in America similar attempts to stop counsel from exposing the unsoundness of judicial opinions given in support of the fugitive slave act. —Ed.

50

This is the very doctrine lately revived, in a little different shape, by some of our American divines – that whatsoever the legislative power in its conscience thinks it may require, we ought to yield. —Ed.

51

Some of our American federal judges are in the habit of declaiming much in the same style against abolitionists – who, indeed, may be considered as occupying a position in our present affairs in many respects parallel to that of the English Puritans in the times of Charles I. —Ed.

52

Having once refused to hear counsel against ship money, he now undertook to square the account by refusing to hear counsel for it. —Ed.

53

See life of Hyde, ante, p. 97.

54

This supposed inability of the king to do wrong has in America among a certain class been transferred to the federal government, which represents the royal authority of the English. —Ed.