In 1822, with few precedents to guide him, Judge Lemuel drafted the first charter of the city, which lasted until 1913. On the death of Chief State Justice Isaac Parker, Governor Levi Lincoln offered Shaw the appointment. Daniel Webster successfully urged Shaw to accept, though it meant giving up a practice of $15,000 to $20,000 a year for a salary of $3,500. And for this, if nothing else, Webster later thought the public owed him a debt of gratitude. Shaws commission was issued August 30, 1830, and he served 30 years, resigning August 21, 1860. His exceptionally long judicial career coincided with the development of many important industries, so that he made law on such matters as water power, railroads and other public utilities. Probably no other state judge has so deeply influenced commercial and constitutional law throughout the nation. Almost all the principles laid down by him have proved sound, although his remarkable skill in expounding the fellow-servant rule considerably delayed the replacement of that rule by workmen’s compensation. An opinion by Shaw rarely lends itself to isolated quotations; its strength lies in the entire solidity of its reasoning. His words had weight rather than brilliancy or eloquence,[1] and his greatness came from his personality as well as from his intellectual powers. He was no mere writer of opinions, but preeminently a magistrate. In 1802, he moved with Everett to Amherst, New Hampshire, where besides doing legal work he contributed a poem on dancing and translations from French to the Farmers Cabinet, a local newspaper. He became engaged to Nancy Melville, daughter of Maj. Thomas Melville of Boston, but she died soon afterward. She was the inspiration for the poem The Last Leaf by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (Moby Dick by Melville) See Col. Robert Gould Shaw
Posted on: Sun, 26 Jan 2014 12:27:11 +0000