648
THE GREEN BAG
time," but he wanted the Supreme Court also to see and know "what an utter d — d fool the judge below really was." In an earlier case, Dobbins v. Stevens (17 S. & R., 14), 1827, Mr. Stevens successfully defended his conduct in purchasing a prop erty at sheriff's sale, upon the title to which he had given an opinion that was claimed to have deterred purchasers. The court below said he had committed a "legal fraud," but Chief Justice Gibson set him right. His opponents, however, at the Bar and in poli tics were wont to remind him of the case; and "Dobbins, Dobbins" was frequently fairly roared at him. Dobbins was an Adams County lawyer who died in the almshouse.1 Besides land-title and water-right cases, in which he was eminently successful, not able litigation like the case of Common wealth v. Canal Commissioners (5 W. & S., 388), in which he was associated with Mr. Meredith; Stormfeltz v. Manor Turnpike Road (13 Pa., 555); Commonwealth v. Orestes Collins (8 Watts, 331), involving the judicial tenure of a Lancaster County judge under the Constitution of 1838; the peren nially interesting Coleman v. Grubb (23 Pa., 394) — Mr. Stevens was very frequently employed in cases of contested wills and especially delighted in that sort of fray. One of these which excited great popular interest and intense local feeling was the Stevenson case (33 Pa., 496), in which the decedent left an estate to strangers to his blood. Mr. Stevens lost it below — as most lawyers will lose such a case when left to a jury of the vicinage — but the trial judge went so far as to say, in substance, that, for a testator to be competent, he must know who were the natural objects of his bounty, and how his estate was to be dis tributed "among them;" to which the dic tum of Justice Woodward aptly replies that "a man without parents, wife, or children, can scarcely be said to have natural objects See also Miles v. Stevens, 3 Pa., 21.
of his bounty." After reversal the case was settled. One of the notable cases outside of Lan caster County in which he was engaged while at the Lancaster Bar was that of Specht v. The Commonwealth (8 Pa., 312), involving the right of the Seventh Day Bap tists to engage in worldly employment on Sunday, in accordance with their conscien tious belief that the seventh day of the week was the true Sabbath of the Lord. The report of the case presents Mr. Stevens' argument at exceptional length and is illus trative of his scholarship and legal learning. He recognized that the question at issue had been decided against him in Common wealth v. Wolf (3 S. & R., 48), in which Tilghman, C. J., being absent, Yeates, J.T rendered the opinion, Gibson concurring, and it was held that "persons professing the Jewish religion and others who keep the seventh, day as their Sabbath are liable to the penalties imposed by the law for this offense." But he boldly grappled with stare decisis and argued that the question should be re-opened and the constitutional ity of the Act of 1794 be reconsidered, be cause the former opinion had been rendered "by two judges, one of whom was just closing a long life of usefulness and was then of great age; the other was just entering upon his judicial career." Questions, he contended, of such "importance to the happiness of man" had been frequently re considered by the court, and he cited sig nificant precedents. He derided the doctrine that "the Christian religion is a part of the common law," and declared that this doc trine had been "promulgated in the worst times and by the worst men of a govern ment that avowedly united church and state: in times when men were sent to the block or the stake on any frivolous charge of heresy." Of course the judgment of the court was adverse to his contention, but his argument is a most readable and interesting one. Like a large proportion of leading lawyers
