page_title: Charles S. Burnell
section_title: Vocation
hierarchical_section_title: Charles S. Burnell / Vocation
caption_attribution_description: English: Charles S. Burnell, assistant Los Angeles city attorney, center, with glasses and looking at the camera, is surrounded by other lawyers as they took some time for a photo while working on the Silver Lake Park condemnation suit in 1913. Other information This is only a portion of the original photograph.
context_page_description: Charles S. Burnell served 21 years as a judge in Los Angeles County, California, presiding over trials that sometimes involved Hollywood motion-picture personalities. Several opinions from higher courts castigated or chastised Burnell for his activities or statements in court.
context_section_description: Burnell practiced law in San Francisco from 1896 until he resettled in Los Angeles in 1906. As an attorney, he drew attention when he filed a legal paper written entirely in verse. He was assistant city attorney between 1913 and 1918 when he became a special counsel for the Los Angeles County Flood Control District. In 1919 he was elected city attorney, serving for two years until he was chosen by voters for the Los Angeles County Superior Court.
  From 1924 to 1932 he was a professor of constitutional law at Loyola University.
  In July 1925 Burnell made news when he allowed attorneys and court officials (including himself) the right to remove their jackets during hot-weather days, and then he dashed off a poem to mark the event:
  Oh, why should judges stew and sweat,
  As hot and hotter it doth get.
  Can they not justice fine dispense
  Without such suffering intense?
  Why should we not our coats remove—
  Our sense of freedom to improve—
  And show our shirts (if clean they be)
  Without a loss of dignity?
caption: Assistant City Attorney Burnell in center, with glasses and looking at camera, surrounded by other lawyers who were working on a Silver Lake Park condemnation suit in 1913
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