Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 12.pdf/446

This page needs to be proofread.

The Court of Appeals of Kentucky. period of more than twelve years' service in its highest court, on June i, 1847, he re signed the arduous duties of his station to take up the less exacting, but more lucrative practice of law. At the bar he was very successsful and he accumulated quite a large fortune. This he generously bestowed upon various institutions of learning in Ken tucky and Tennessee. He died June 11, 1860, having the greatest respect of all the people of both his native and his adopted state. THOMAS A. MARSHALL.

The ninth Chief Justice of Kentucky (and the last under the appointive judiciary sys tem) was Thomas A. Marshall commissioned as Chief Justice on June I, 1847. He had served as Associate Justice of the Court since March 18, 1835. When the constitution of 1850 went into full operation in May, 1851, the Court of Ap peals was organized on the basis of popular elections. So great was Judge Marshall's reputation and his popularity that he was easily elected and hé served as Judge of the Court under the new constitution until Au gust i, 1856, when his term expired. Dur ing the last two years of this term, he was again Chief Justice of the Court. Again on February 12, 1866, he was ap pointed Chief Justice by the Governor to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Chief Justice William Sampson and he held the position this time until a successor could be chosen at the election held in August, 1866. Thus he was Chief Justice three times, twice by appointment and once by popular election. He served in the court sixteen years under the constitution of 1799 and nearly seven years under the constitu tion of 1850. Few Judges of the court have so long held the confidence of the people and no other has ever so approved himself under both systems of selecting Judges. Thomas A. Marshall was the son of

413

Humphrey Marshall, the Kentucky historian and statesman, and was born in Woodford County, Kentucky, January 15, 1794. He is not of the same family as Chief Justice John Marshall, whose father also lived in Kentucky. He had one brother, John J. Marshall, who was the official reporter of the Kentucky Court of Appeals. When only seven years of age, he was taken by his father, then United States Senator from Kentucky, to Washington City, where it is related that one day he climbed up one of the large pillars in the vestibule of the old Capitol. Some one asked him what he was doing. " I am writ ing my name," he said, "and I want to see if it will be here when I come to Congress." This ambitious spirit, developed so early in life, carried him through Yale College with distinction and secured for him numer ous political honors and eventually a seat in Congress for the two terms from. 1831 to 1835. In March of the last year he was made Judge of the Court of Appeals. He died in Louisville, April 17, 1871, in his seventy-eighth year, and was buried at his old home in Lexington, Kentucky. In all his relations in life, he brought credit to the honored name he bore and he ranks as one of Kentucky's foremost jurists. JAMES SIMPSON. When the constitution of 1850 went into full operation,' it not only vacated the office of every Judge in the state and substituted an elective for an appointive judiciary, but it provided for some radical changes in the law and in the practice of the courts. It was made the duty of the General Assembly to codify all the statute laws and to adopt a code of procedure in civil and criminal cases. Nothing like this had ever before been attempted in Kentucky and upon the new courts chosen in a new method devolved the duties of construing the new constitu tion and deciding all the novel questions of