page_title: Joseph Hodges Choate
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Joseph Hodges Choate / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Joseph Hodges Choate on May 11, 1917 in Manhattan
context_page_description: Joseph Hodges Choate was an American lawyer and diplomat. Choate was associated with many of the most famous litigations in American legal history, including the Kansas prohibition cases, the Chinese exclusion cases, the Isaac H. Maynard election returns case, the Income Tax Suit, and the Samuel J. Tilden, Jane Stanford, and Alexander Turney Stewart will cases. In the public sphere, he was influential in the founding of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
context_section_description: After graduation from law school, Choate was admitted first to the Massachusetts in 1855, followed by admission to the New York bar in 1856, after which he entered the law office of Scudder & Carter in New York City.
  His success in his profession was immediate, and in 1860 he became junior partner in the firm of Evarts, Southmayd & Choate, the senior partner in which was William M. Evarts. This firm and its successor, that of Evarts, Choate & Beaman, remained for many years among the leading law firms of New York and of the country, the activities of both being national rather than local.
  During these busy years, Choate was associated with many of the most famous legal cases in American legal history, including the Tilden, Alexander Turney Stewart, and Jane Stanford will cases, the Kansas prohibition cases, the Chinese exclusion cases (in which he argued against the law's validity), the Isaac H. Maynard election returns case, and the Income Tax Suit.  In 1871, be became a member of the Committee of Seventy in New York City, which was instrumental in breaking up the Tweed Ring, and later assisted in the prosecution of the indicted officials. He served as president of the American Bar Association, the New York State Bar Association, and the New York City Bar Association.  In the retrial of the General Fitz-John Porter case, he obtained a reversal of the decision of the original court-martial.
  His greatest reputation was won perhaps in cross-examination.  In politics, he allied himself with the Republican Party on its organization, being a frequent speaker in presidential campaigns, beginning with that of 1856. He never held political office, although he was a candidate for the Republican U.S. senatorial nomination for New York against Senator Thomas C. Platt in 1897.  In 1894, he was president of the New York state constitutional convention.
caption: Joseph Hodges Choate on May 11, 1917, in Manhattan
exif: {}