Vol. VIII.
No. i.
BOSTON.
January, 1896.
THE NEW SUPREME COURT JUSTICE. Promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor yet from the south." — Psalm lxxv. By A. Oakey Hall. RUFUS WHEELER PECKHAM, when early in the New Year he arrives at Washington to put on the gown of a Judge of the highest Court in the Union, will doubtless recall that his honorable visit was not the first that he had made to the national capital. His first arrival there was when as a very juvenile — perhaps as Venfant terrible — he came with his father, whose full namesake he is, at the time when the sire took his seat as member of Congress from the district in which the capital of New York State is situated. Rufiis Wheeler Peckham, senior, was, as his son became, a native of Albany County; and was bred to the law, in which profession he became highly successful; and after his Congres sional term ended he was elected as a justice of the Supreme Court: and also in 1870 a judge of the Court of Appeals. Judicially the new justice of the United States Supreme Court precisely followed in his father's footsteps, for after succeeding to his father's practice he also became first a justice of the Supreme Court, and next by election in 1886, a judge of the Court of Appeals. Following precedents set by New York pre decessors who had become Washington justices — Smith Thompson (from 1823 to 1843), Samuel Nelson (from 1845 to 1872), and Ward Hunt (from 1872 to 1882), the new justice has gone from the highest State bench to the highest Federal court. The Bar of Albany has always contained representatives of equal eminence with any
others in the cities of this country. And when Peckham, the elder, was a young lawyer, he had as compeers such great lawyers as Martin Van Buren, Benjamin F. Butler — an attorney-general of the United States — James Vandcrpoel and Samuel Stevens; with the additional value of pro fessional acquaintance with all the eminent counselors of his day who from all parts of the Empire State visited Albany from time to time, there to argue important appellate controversies. Equally, the son, as student and practitioner, enjoyed similar advantages. The elder Peckham was notable for being a lawyer who was thoroughly grounded in the foundation principles of legal science, before he came to study the reports; and eventually as judge to aid in constructing them. What more natural and proper therefore that the son as his father's student should likewise imbue himself with those foundation principles, and in all respects accept his sire as his professional model? The latter passed ten years upon the Supreme Court bench, but only three upon that of the Appeals: for in November, 1873, voyaging abroad for his health, he became one of the passenger victims of the ill-starred steamship Ville du Havre. He was by death prevented from feeling paternal pride in beholding his son a few years later suc ceeding him by election on the Supreme bench; or by an after election, in November, 1886, filling the very chair which his own death vacated in the Court of Appeals.
