The History of Orange County New York

by Unknown

It is Charles F. Brown who belongs to the period we are now considering. Graduated from Yale College in 1866, admitted to practice in 1868, elected district attorney in 1874 and county judge in 1877, he resigned in 1882 the position of county judge to assume the duties of supreme court judge.

Mr. Winfield had always ardently desired a position upon the bench of the Supreme Court. It was one of the bitterest disappointments of his life that he so narrowly missed this object of his ambition in 1875, when Judge Dykman was elected. In that year the widespread revolt among the bar and public against the re-election of that most unpopular official, Judge Tappen, who had received the regular democratic nomination, made it evident that any independent democratic candidate who should receive the endorsement of the republican convention would be elected. Mr. Winfield's hopes of receiving this endorsement rose high and were on the point of being realized when an unexpected influence intervened to dash them. General Benjamin F. Tracy, who had a longstanding personal feud with William Fullerton, the brother of Stephen W. Fullerton, suddenly came to the conclusion that he did not want upon the bench an intimate friend of the Fullertons. He therefore threw his influence in favor of Jackson O. Dykman, then a prominent democratic lawyer of Westchester County, who thus received the nomination. His election by a large democratic and republican vote confirmed the prediction that such a coalition would easily accomplish the defeat of Judge Tappen. Orange County, notwithstanding that it shared Mr. Winfield's disappointment, followed his generous lead in supporting Judge Dykman and gave him a majority of 10,000. No one labored for Mr. Winfield's nomination at this time more earnestly than Charles F. Brown himself.

In 1882 Mr. Winfield's hopes of obtaining a nomination revived, but Charles F. Brown, who cherished the natural and honorable ambition to emulate his father's noble example and distinguished career as a jurist, felt that he ought not to stand aside again. He of course secured the delegate from his own assembly district without opposition. Overcoming the opposition offered by Mr. Winfield's friends in the second assembly district, he secured its delegate also. By thus presenting a united front Orange County was able to successfully assert its claims in the judicial convention and to secure for Judge Brown the nomination that was followed by his election.

No one was more gratified by Judge Brown's election than Mr. Winfield himself, especially as it involved the defeat of General Tracy, the very man who, seven years before, had snatched from him the same prize when almost within his grasp. When General Tracy, of Kings County, was nominated by the republican convention against Judge Brown, of Orange County, he confidently expected to defeat Judge Brown, whose greatness was then unknown to the district at large, through the promised support of many large Brooklyn interests. But all his calculations were confounded by a wholly unexpected event. This was the cataclysm in which Grover Cleveland, with whom Judge Brown was running, carried the State by the enormous, unprecedented majority of 200,000.

Thus was Orange County enabled to contribute to the bench of the Supreme Court a jurist who, in the fourteen years of his incumbency, made a profound, a lasting impression upon the jurisprudence not only of his State but of his country.

After serving for six years with great acceptance in the trial and special terms, he was, upon the formation of the second division of the Court of Appeals, promoted to its bench. His services during the four years' existence of that court were of the highest value, his luminous opinions being still quoted and followed in every State in the Union. Some of the litigations which came before him were in the highest degree difficult and complicated; one of the most important being the case involving the construction of the Tilden will, in which the opinion of Judge Brown, declaring the trusts invalid, was adopted by the court. His opinions rendered in this court constitute an imperishable monument to his learning and ability.

Judge Brown's manner upon the bench, at trial and special term, was a happy mingling of simplicity and dignity. His most noticeable personal trait was his entire lack of self-consciousness. He never thought about himself or about the impression which he might be making upon the bar or the public. His mind was wholly upon the case and upon the principles involved in it. He was considerate of the feelings of counsel and rarely rebuked them for imperfect presentation of their views. When they wandered from the point he thought about the case and when they came back to the case he followed them again. It is simply the truth of history to say that the members of the bar, not only of Orange County but of the entire State, do not expect to see in this generation a nearer approach to the ideal judge than they were permitted to behold during the fourteen years of Judge Brown's incumbency.

There was one marked characteristic of Judge Brown while upon the bench which deserves more than a passing mention. After a case was submitted to him and while it was still under consideration he was never afraid to enter upon a discussion of the principles involved in it, with either of the counsel he might happen to meet, if he felt that such a discussion might prove profitable. In this respect he differed from some of his colleagues who were perfectly aghast at the thought of counsel conversing with them upon any phase of a pending case in the absence of opposing counsel. This of course was due to their high sense of the importance of preserving not only real impartiality but the strictest appearance of impartiality. But there was something in Judge Brown's character which did not need the protection of such a rule; something in the very atmosphere which he threw out; something in the impression which he gave of being simply a thinking, working, impersonal, intellectual machine, which left no room for misunderstanding on the part of any lawyer thus admitted to a share in his deliberations and which left his judicial independence and impartiality absolutely untouched. This capacity at once constitutes the highest test and the consummate type of the strictly judicial temperament. To this test Judge Brown easily responded and of this type he was the perfect embodiment.

No one can be accused of sycophancy in awarding to a judge long since retired from the bench his merited meed of praise and gratitude for distinguished public services. Nor even in the case of judges still occupying the bench can such a charge fairly lie when the faithful historian surveying and reviewing, from the serene heights of retirement and rejection, the stirring scenes in which once he bore an active part, is now as indifferent to, as independent of, the opinions of judges as they are of his. It would indeed be far more entertaining if there could be contributed to this volume the opinions which the judges hold of each other, thrown into literary form instead of merely being promulgated from the bench or disseminated by the press. When, upon the occasion of Queen Victoria's jubilee, the judges met in London to prepare an address to Her Majesty, the proposed draught submitted to them began with the words, "Conscious as we are of our shortcomings," whereupon Lord Bowen gravely suggested, as an amendment, "Conscious as we are of each other's shortcomings." Human nature is very much the same here and in England; very much the same, in its manifestations, among judges and among lawyers.