Trollope, Cross-Examined

    Codd [a barrister] was not always so lucky. He once defended a man for stealing from a post-office, and cross-examined one of the prosecution witnesses.

    "What is your occupation?"

    "A supervisor of the Post Office," said Anthony Trollope.

    "And have you also written a book called Barchester Towers?"

    The witness agreed.

    "Was there a word of truth in that book from beginning to end?"

    "It was a work of fiction", said Trollope.

    "Fiction or not," said Codd relentlessly, "was there a word of truth in it from beginning to end?"

    "Well, if you put it that way," said Trollope, "there was not."

    Codd sat down in triumph. He invited the jury in due course to consider whether they could possibly convict on the evidence of a man like that.

    They could and did. But you can never tell with juries.

R. G. Hamilton, All Jangle and Riot: A Barrister's History of the Bar (Abingdon, Oxon.: Professional Books, 1986), p. 274

Everyone has a right to a fair trial, even a war criminal

After hearing so many stories of pain and anguish from civilians [in Sierra Leone], I didn't understand how people—my friends—could defend the perpetrators. "Look, this whole international criminal tribunal thing would be a circus if there wasn't a good defense," my American friend Scott said. . . .

"Everyone—even a war criminal, Jess—has a right to a fair trial. The prosecution would have a field day with these guys if we didn't hold them to some standard. They might very well have been war criminals, but it was for particular acts at particular times. They didn't do everything in all places at all times, which is what the prosecution is throwing at them."

Jessica Alexander, Chasing Chaos: My Decade in and out of Humanitarian Aid (New York: Broadway Books, 2013), pp. 279-80.

Prosecutor doesn't want be a political boss

I wanted to develop a different model—what I eventually came to call the Justice Model. I consciously tried to reduce the personal power of the prosecutor while extending the scope of the office itself. We looked for opportunities to rectify injustice, bring a rule of law to places neglected before, and make justice itself the guiding principle, not political influence or partisan benefit. I did not want to be a better political boss than Carroll; I wanted the office to move outside of the political world. 

Christopher T. Bayley, Seattle Justice: The Rise and Fall of the Police Payoff System in Seattle (Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 2015), ch. 7. (Bayley was King County Prosecutor 1971-78.)

Prosecutor uses staff for politics

Carroll's power base began in his office, with around fifty deputy prosecutors plus an equal number of supporting staff. After purging the staff he inherited in 1948, he subsequently hired loyal Republicans as replacements, enhancing his power in the Republican Party. With an eye toward reelection, he chose among Republicans on the basis of ethnic identity and political connections.

Carroll made further political use of his staff after he hired them, insisting they remain politically loyal to him and work in his campaigns. . . . Carroll told one deputy, "Look, this is a political office. You want to work for me, you work for me twenty-four hours a day. I want you to work on my campaign. Donate as much oney as you can to it, because when I don't have a job, you don't have a job."

Christopher T. Bayley, Seattle Justice: The Rise and Fall of the Police Payoff System in Seattle (Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 2015), ch.3. (Charles O. Carroll was King County Prosecuting Attorney 1948-70.)

 Chuck Carroll's idea of "diversity" had been like filling a twelve-crayon Crayola box: choose one of each color or ethnic group. He liked to boast this office was a mini-United Nations. but he used his deputies to garner political support from Seattle's orgnized racial and ethnic communities, not to reach out to them.

Id., ch. 7.

Pre-law, 1751, Scotland

"It' my opinion to be called an advocate."

"That's but a weary trade, Davie," says Alan, "and rather a blagyard one forby. Ye would be better in a king's coat than that."

"And no doubt that would be the way to have us meet, cried I. "But as you'll be in King Lewie's coat, and I'll be in King Geordie's, we'll have a daintie meeting of it."

"There's some sense in that," he admitted.

"An advocate, then, it'll have to be," I continued, "and I think it a more suitable trade for a gentleman that was three times disarmed."

Robert Louis Stevenson, Catriona (1892), pt. I, ch. 12

Edinburgh lawyer, 1751

I'm a lawyer, ye see: fond of my books and my bottle, a good plea, a well-drawn deed, a crack in the Parliament House with other lawyer bodies, and perhaps a turn at the golf on a Saturday at e'en. Where do ye come in with your Hieland plaids and claymores?"

Robert Louis Stevenson, Catriona (1892), pt. I, ch. 2

Law students should learn legal research

A lawyer's books are more than merely the tools with which he works. They are the field which he must cultivate, the mine which he must explore. Obviously, therefore, it is of the first importance that a lawyer should know how to get at the material stored away in the volume at his hand. The law student cannot learn all the law during the two or three or four years of his legal studies, and it is an important part of his work to learn how to use lawbooks.

Edward Q. Keasbey, Instruction in Finding Cases, 1 Am. L. Sch. Rev. 69, 69 (1906*)

The American Law School Review was published by West Publishing Company 1902-47. Edward Q. Keasbey, of the Newark, N.J. Bar, was chairman of the American Bar Association's Committee on Law Reporting and Digesting.

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*HeinOnline says the volume covered 1902-1906. This article was in vol. 1, no. 3. Since a note on p. iii of the volumes says that vol. 1, no. 2 was issued in Nov. 1906, I'm going with 1906.

Not easily satisfied

"[L]awyers, sharks, and leeches, are not easily satisfied, you know!" 

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850), ch. 52 (Uriah Heep speaking)

No time for novels, harumph

I have no patience with minutiae. I have spent my life cutting through trivia, getting to the core of a story. Maybe this is why I have read, from beginning to end, only two long novels in my lifetime: Gone with the Wind and Dr. Zhivago.

Leon Jaworski with Mickey Herskowitz, Confession and Avoidance: A Memoir (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1979), p. 3, quoted in Jack Hamann, On American Soil: How Justice Became a Casualty of World War II (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2005), p. ____.