GEORGE HOADLY to the right of action for damages caused by a public nuisance. In 1864, on the expiration of the term for which he was elected, Judge Hoadly was re-elected; but in 1866 he resigned to resume the practice of his profession and formed the firm of Hoadly, Jackson & Johnson, by which he entered into a pro fessional and personal association with Edgar M. Johnson which lasted until Mr. Johnson's death in 1894. At about the same time he became a professor in the Cincinnati Law School and in that capacity labored zealously for over twenty years to discharge the debt which he felt he owed to his profession. The best evidence of his success in discharging this debt is to be found in the large number of lawyers in Ohio and the neighboring states who gladly acknowledge that a great measure of their success is due to the training they received in the Cincinnati Law School. Professionally the twenty years follow ing were marked by an advance from a local to a national reputation. We may be allowed briefly to trace a few of the steps of this advance. In 1869 the Board of Education of Cin cinnati passed a resolution forbidding reli gious instruction or the reading of religious books, including the Holy Bible, in the schools, and repealing the regulation which had been in force from the year 1852 re quiring the opening exercises to commence by reading a portion of the Holy Bible and appropriate singing. A number of zealous tax payers at once brought suit in the Superior Court of Cincinnati to enjoin the putting in operation or the enforcing of this resolution. In effect this was a suit for a mandatory injunction to compel the reading of the Bible according to the authorized, or King James, version, with the singing of hymns as the opening exer cise of every school in Cincinnati and, as a result, in Ohio. The case was reserved to be argued in the general term where it was
687
argued for the plaintiffs by William M. Ramsey, George R. Sage, afterward for many years United States District Judge, and Rufus King, and for the defendants, the Board of Education by J. B. Stallo, afterward minister to Italy, George Hoadly and Stanley Matthews, afterward one of the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. In few cases in Ohio has such an array of counsel been heard, and the argument was worthy of the cause and of the counsel. Mr. Hoadly in his argument for the defendants, after discussing at some length the proposition that the Board of Education in its management of the schools was vested with a discretion, that what they had done was within the scope of that discretion and that no court has jurisdiction to control the discretionary acts of such a board, by injunction or otherwise, devoted the larger part of his argument to a defence of the action of the Board as based upon sound principles, and to showing that such relief as was prayed by the plaintiffs could only be had on the view that evan gelical protestantism was the established religion of Ohio. The majority of the court, Judges Storer and Hagans, decided the cause in favor of the plaintiffs, but Alfonso Taft, the honored father of the present Secretary of War, dissented, and no act of his life more became him. Surely, Minor v. Board of Education deserves a place among the " Decisive Battles of the Law" as the battle for re ligious freedom. It is much to be regretted that the volume containing the record, the oral arguments of counsel and the opinions of the judges of the Superior Court is extremely rare. The case was taken to the Supreme Court by petition in error, and the case is there reported under the name of Board of Education v. Minor, 23 O. S. 211. The Supreme Court unanimously reversed the judgment of the Superior Court and held that what the Board of Education had done
