Page images
PDF
EPUB

NOLW

[graphic][merged small]

MR. JUSTICE DAVID J. BREWER.

(Supreme Court of the United States.)

EDITOR IN CHIEF.

R. JUSTICE BREWER was appointed to the Supreme Bench of the United States by President Harrison in December, 1889. As a preparation for that exalted position, he had had an experience of more than a quarter of a century on the bench of lower courts, State and Federal. Beginning in 1862, he served as judge of the probate and criminal courts of Leavenworth County, Kansas; judge of the First District Court of Kansas; justice of the Supreme Court of Kansas; and judge of the United States Circuit Court,—a position from which he was promoted to the Supreme Bench as the successor to Mr. Justice Matthews, of Ohio.

Justice Brewer is the son of Rev. Josiah Brewer, who, as a missionary to Asia Minor, established the first English newspaper in Smyrna and first intro. duced American methods of education into the Turkish Empire. His mother, a sister of Mr. Justice Field, accompanied his father to Asia Minor and, while they were residents of Smyrna, David Josiah Brewer" was born there, June 20th, 1837. While he was still a child his parents returned to America, and he grew up in Connecticut. He was educated at the Wesleyan University, at Yale, and at the Albany Law School, studying also in the law office of his uncle, David Dudley Field. Among his classmates at Yale were Senator He is Chauncey M. Depew and Mr. Justice Brown of the Supreme Court. an LL. D. of Yale and several other universities, but has the still higher honor of having found time to he president of a library association; chairman of a school board; superintendent of public schools; and president of the Kansas State Teachers' Association. Since his appointment to the Supreme Bench of the United States, he has served as a member of the Venezuela Commission appointed by President Cleveland; and as a member of the British-Venezuela Arbitration Tribunal, selected by the two nations. He has done important educational work, notably as a member of the faculty of the Columbian Law School. His address, "The Protection of Private Property against Public Attack," delivered before the Yale Law School in 1891, attracted wide attention and excited an animated discussion.

The World's Best Orations» (F. P. Kaiser, St. Louis, 1899, ten volumes) of which he was Editor in Chief, have been one of the notable book-making successes of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. "The World's Best Essays," edited as a companion collection for the World's Best Orations, represent the same purposes and methods.

[blocks in formation]
« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »