The Green Bag VOL. XVII.
No. ii
BOSTON
NOVEMBER, 1905
JEROME THE LAWYER BY ARTHUR TRAIN THE fearlessly aggressive personality of the present district attorney of New York County, with his acknowledged capac ity and effectiveness as a public prosecutor has naturally aroused the interest and com mendation of the public somewhat to the exclusion of a proper appreciation of his ability and achievements in a purely pro fessional capacity. One often hears asked the question, "Does Jerome know any law, or is he merely a fighter?" It is the pur pose of this article to answer this interroga tion and to satisfy the reader that while Jerome indubitably is a "fighter," an ener getic servant of the public, and a leader of popular opinion, he is at the same time a trained lawyer of judicial mind, who com bines with a thorough knowledge of the law an unusual originality and independence of thought and an extraordinary breadth of legal vision. Judged impartially upon their merits it is by no means sure that Jerome's greatest, as well as his most permanent, ser vices to the community in which he dwells, have not been performed as a maker of law and of laws, rather than as a mere prosecutor of criminals or as a publicspirited citizen. Jerome was compelled to abandon his college course at Amherst in 1881 at the end of his junior term, on account of general ill health, which for several years interfered with his legal studies but which did not prevent his graduating with dis tinction from the Columbia Law School in 1884. He was an enthusiastic and exhaus tive student, and while entering immedi ately into general practice, made it a point to continue his studies into those branches
of the law not covered by the curriculum, digesting text books and reports, and fitting himself in every possible way for the prob lems which he might later have to solve. When, therefore, in 1888, he was appointed a deputy assistant upon the • professional staff of John R. Fellows, then district attor ney of New York County, he brought with him a general and effective knowledge of the law as a whole, unusual in an occupant of what has generally been regarded as a semi-political office. His vigor and resource fulness in court, and his quickness of mind and practical grasp of fact, led Mr. Fellows at once to put his new assistant at trial work of the most varied and often of the most difficult character, and during the two years which followed, Jerome gave excel lent account of himself as a capable and astute trial lawyer, as well as an acute and able arguer of points of law. In those days, when the volume of busi ness, though large, was relatively small as compared with that of the present time, the "trial-assistants," so called, not only conducted their cases in court but took them up on appeal after conviction. In this way Jerome had the opportunity and the consequent experience of defending a large number of his own convictions before the Court of Appeals. Among these was the now famous case of The People versus Moran, which finally determined the doctrines which were to govern attempts at crime in the state of New York. Moran had been observed by a detective to place his hand in the pocket of an unknown woman and to withdraw it empty, under circumstances clearly indica
