Litchfield enquirer., 1870-05-12


 officers of the court, as we'll as of the legal profession. A wide field is open before me, and I fear the exploration which I shall give it will be of very little interest to my brethren, but such impressions of the men of those times as remain with me, I will endeavor to lay before them.
 REORGANIZATION OF THE COURTS.
 The Courts had then just been organ ized under the present Constitution of the State. Under the old government, the Supreme Court consisted of nine judges, and they were elected annually by the le- gislature. Under the Constitution, the number was reduced to five, and they held their office during good behaviour, or un- til they reached the age of seventy year. In like manner. the judges of the County Courts were reduced from five to three. Formerly these judges held the Superior Courts, but under the Constitution, they were holden by one judge. The old Court has embodied as high an order of judicial talent as any other Court in any of the States, and when the appointment of the judges under the new organization was in contemplation, much anxiety was felt among the members of the legal profes- sion lest the character of the Court should deteriorate. Chief Justice Swift was very popular with all classes. and it was thought that his high character as jurist, and his spotless character as 8 man. would render it pretty certain that he would be retained at the head of the new Court. But the party then in power, known in our politi- cal history as the Federation party, deter mined to make an almost entire change in the material of the Court, and to man the bench with new iacumbents. For the new Chief Justice, they selected the Hon. Ste- phen Titus Hosmer, of Middletown, who had been member of the old Court some three or four years, and who, it was claim ed, had voted the ticket of the party at the next preceding election. It was laid to his charge that he had done so with the intent of thereby obtaining the position which he was afterwards called to fill. The other judges were John T. Peters, Asa Chapman, Jeremiah Gates Brainard. and William Bristol. Judge Brainard was of the old Court, and it was the intention of tbe ruling party to put James Lanman in the place; but some of the tolerationists of New London County did not believe him qualified to fill it, and refused to vote for him. Judge Brainard was of the same county, and the federalists naturally ral. lied upon him in opposition to Lanman, and with the aid of dissentient toleration. ists, Brainard was elected. He was the only old federalist on the bench. till Dag gett came on, in 1926.
 CHIEF JUSTICE KOSHER.
 Stephen Titus Hosmer was lawyer of eminence in his peculiar way. He had no very high standing as an advocate, but as lawyer, learned in elementary princi- pies, his position was very good one. A gentleman who had heard him, told me l that his manner was hard and dry, and his elocution very defective. but in some branches of legal science he had few su. periors. He seemed to delight in explor- ing ancient paths in search of legal prin- ciples. and in getting up old legal tracts and dissertations. In the first volume of Days Reports, there is note of forty pa- ges of fine print, containing an opinion of Lord Camden, of the English Court of Common Pleas, which has hardly a rival in judicial learning or eloquence. MT. Day informed me that this was presented him in manuscript by Mir. Hosmer, there being then no printed copy of it on this side of the Atlantic. He was appointed a Judge of the old Court in 1915, but being one of the younger judges, it never fell to his lot to preside on the trial of case.