322
THE GREEN BAG
Massachusetts, March 2, 1836, where his father, Billings Brown, carried on a manu facturing business. He graduated from Yale College in 1856, and after attending the law school at both Yale and Harvard and studying in the offices of John H. Brockway of Ellington, Connecticut, and of Walker & Russell of Detroit, he was ad mitted in July, 1860, to the Bar of Wayne County, Michigan, where he had gone in 1859, regarding it as a good place for start ing in business. In the spring of 1861 he was appointed by President Lincoln Deputy United States Marshal and subsequently, Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, which position he held until 1868 when he was appointed judge of a state court to fill a vacancy. He held this office but a few months and then returned to the active practice of the law. With John S. Newberry and Ashley Pond, both of whom became prominent members of the Bar of their state, the latter still living and one of its honored members, he formed the firm of Newberry, Pond & Brown. This relation continued until 1875, when President Grant appointed him district judge for the East ern District of Michigan, to succeed Hon. John W. Longycar, which office he held until his promotion to the Supreme Bench of the nation. The Eastern District of Michigan includes the city and port of Detroit and as one of the great mercantile centers in the Great Lakes region of this country there was a large amount of admiralty business con nected with the shipping on the Lakes. Until the passage of the Act of 1845 extend ing the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction of the United States courts to the Great Lakes the Federal courts, under the authority of the Thomas Jefferson, 10 Wheat. 428, the opinion in which was written by Justice Story, had confined their admiralty jurisdiction under the old English rule to the ebb and flow of the tides. The consti tutionality of this act was sustained in the
case of the Genessee Chief (12 How. 443), the opinion being written by Chief Justice Taney. Justice Daniel alone adhered to the old rule and in his dissenting opinion con soled himself in his loneliness by the fact that he at least had the support of Marshall, Kent, and Story if he had committed any error. It must be noted that this apparent extension of admiralty jurisdiction was not based exclusively on the act of Congress but on the ground that the Lakes and navi gable waters connecting them were within the scope of the maritime and admiralty jurisdiction of the courts of the United States when the Constitution was adopted; in fact in the Genessee Chief the court prac tically overruled its earlier decision in the Thomas Jefferson. Judge Brown had not long occupied his position in the District Court before he es tablished for himself a reputation as an eminent authority in admiralty, and his de cisions were read with interest throughout the country and were treated with universal respect. In many cases no appeal was taken from his decisions and of the fortyfour appeals which were taken, in only five instances were his judgments reversed dur ing his entire incumbency of fifteen years in that office. Amongst the opinions which he rendered as district judge were: the Manitoba, reported in 2 Flippen, 241, in volving liability for a collision on the Lakes and what constituted due diligence after the collision became imminent and in this, as in all his cases, both in the District and the Supreme Court, Judge Brown laid great stress on the necessity for prompt action, and especially in the case of a steamer, of stopping and reversing as soon as the danger was discovered. In fact, he said, that "if a collision has become imminent almost any error will be pardonable except that of not stopping and reversing." The Alberta, 23 Fed. Rep. 807, was another case of collision in which both steamers were held in fault because of similar negligence. In the Trenton, 4 Fed. Rep. 657, an Amer
