Thursday, March 6, 2014
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Finds in the Week: Vintage Poster on Food, 1917
Finds in the Week: Vintage Poster on Food, 1917
We've posted on this topic in the past, but here's one we haven't posted
This particular one is sort of oddly contemporary, combining the current points of folks like Michael Pallin, the paleo diet folks, and even Pope Francis, here and there.
We've posted on this topic in the past, but here's one we haven't posted
This particular one is sort of oddly contemporary, combining the current points of folks like Michael Pallin, the paleo diet folks, and even Pope Francis, here and there.
Y Cross, UW, CSU, Donations, Money, and Lost Opportunity
About 14 years ago the Denver owners of the Albany County Y Cross ranch donated it to the University of Wyoming and Colorado State University. A clause of the accepted donation was that the schools could sell it after 14 years. They now intend to do so.
I don't know much about how the ranch was used in the 14 years the schools have owned it. It was supposed to be used for the purpose of teaching agriculture, but from what I read, it wasn't used much. The former owners now say that they regret donating it to the schools, and frankly they should regret it.
This is hard to understand. A 50,000 acre ranch, situated near both schools, should have provided a variety of opportunities for both schools to both teach practical agriculture and, in this day and age, perhaps also experiment a bit with "sustainable" agriculture, a topic which has been hot in agricultural fields in recent years. Now those opportunities will be lost, and the ranch will simply be sued to generate money.
On that both schools would be well advised to note the history of the results of ignoring the wishes of donors. Potential donors to both schools are now on notice that the schools feel free to sell donated assets as quickly as they can. Not all donations are suitable for long term keeping and preservation, of course, but if that is the wish of the donors, they now know that neither UW or CSU can be depended upon to do any more than accepting the donation requires. That may give such potential donors pause, or at least put them on notice that a restrictive clause in any donation may be necessary. For some it may mean no donation at all, something that at least UW, which is under orders to cut back financially, may wish to rethink
Postscript
This matter remains pending in Court. But, with the new University of Wyoming President emphasizing the land grant nature of the institution, and with a huge amount of turnover going on at the upper levels of the school, I wonder if its too much to hope for that the decision to depart with the Y Cross might be reconsidered? .
Postscript II
This is the Y Cross which UW and CSU jointly own: Y Cross Ranch | Wyoming Ranches for Sale
I've posted an earlier thread, well really a compliant, on the plan to sell this facility. This listing, I suppose, shows why the universities are so tempted, or rather have yielded to the temptation, to sell the place. Quite a nice location.
Well, the answer to this question; "I wonder if its too much to hope for that the decision to depart with the Y Cross might be reconsidered?" appears to be "yes, too much to hope for."
The Wyoming Supreme Court issued its decision yesterday concluding:
Postscript II
This is the Y Cross which UW and CSU jointly own: Y Cross Ranch | Wyoming Ranches for Sale
I've posted an earlier thread, well really a compliant, on the plan to sell this facility. This listing, I suppose, shows why the universities are so tempted, or rather have yielded to the temptation, to sell the place. Quite a nice location.
Well, the answer to this question; "I wonder if its too much to hope for that the decision to depart with the Y Cross might be reconsidered?" appears to be "yes, too much to hope for."
The Wyoming Supreme Court issued its decision yesterday concluding:
I'm not surprised and I'm sure the Court is correct, but it's disappointing anyway. That disappointment must be directed at UW however, which still has the opportunity to behave correctly here, along with CSU, but which probably isn't going to.The district court correctly concluded that the donation from the Davis Interests to the University Foundations was a gift, that the MOA did not create an implied trust, and that only the attorney general has standing to enforce the terms of a charitable gift. We thus affirm the court’s dismissal of the complaint and amended complaint for lack of standing.
Monday, March 3, 2014
The Moving Picture: San Francisco after the 1906 Earthquake
Film from San Francisco, after the 1906 earthquake.
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Remembering the Great War
The Centennial of the commencement of the disaster that was World War One, The Great War, is upon us. In August of this year World War One's start will hit the century mark.
Lots of commemorations will occur in Europe, where 100 years has not dulled the sense of disaster. The war was a big one for us here in the United States as well, but I think we'll largely fail to note the event. That's sort of the American thing. We passed through the bicentennial of the War of 1812 pretty much without noticing it, and some of the wars we fought we remember so little that many average Americans don't even know that they occurred. Try dropping a reference to the Philippine Insurrection into your conversations, for example.
There's something about World War One that causes the war to stick out in the minds of Europeans in a way that just doesn't occur to us. For Americans, World War Two is the Big War of the 20th Century, and to some extent its the Big War of all wars. In terms of modern wars it still dominates our consciousness like no other. It crowds out its near neighbors, including World War One, which to us is sort of unfairly characterized as a prequel to the Second World War. It's unfair to our memory of the Great War.
Having said that, the European obsession with the disaster of the Great War may be almost unfair to its memory as well. The war is seen as sort of a huge, homicidal disaster to Europeans, and most particularly to the British, which actually doesn't really reflect how Europeans viewed it at the time, and therefore inaccurately recalls what they thought of while they were fighting it. We'd hardly realized, based upon the way it is recalled today in Europe, that the British, including British servicemen, felt that World War One had been necessary and a genuine victory immediately after the war. And we'd do well to recall that in spite of the horror of World War One the Germans were so upset about the losing result that they were willing to launch a second world war just a little over 20 years later, when the surviving combatants of the first war were often still of military age.
Given the centennial of the war, and the fact that we don't recall it really well, I thought it'd be worth looking at going into the centennial. I don't intend this to be a revisionist post (and there are piles of revisionist theories about World War One) but rather a post to point out some of the things about the war that are inaccurately remembered. World War One, it seems to me, has suffered a great deal in our recollection by being recast in the light of World War Two and the Cold War, making the war something that's shown at the wrong speed and out of focus like an early silent movie, to some degree. And it's a war that, like all wars, indeed all historical events, that saw those who participated in it note the huge and unusual, but pass by the mundane, making us who read about it sometimes think the huge and mandate were the norm. As a result, entire areas of the history of the war have been inaccurately mythologized. Let's take a look at the war going in.
American cemetery in France, following WWI.
But, before we do, let me state why I think the war looms so large in the European imagination. It's in part, of course, because of the slaughter. But more than that, the war destroyed The Old Order in Europe, giving us modern Europe after a long violent process that really only concluded, for the most part, in 1990 when the Soviet Union fell. Europeans know that, and to a degree, perhaps instinctively, they mourn a bit of the passing of that order.
Okay, let's take a look at what we hear about the Great War that might need a little correction.
The War ended a long period of Peace in Europe
This is a good place to start, as it starts before the war. The Peace.
We often hear that the war seemingly came out of a long peace, and that took everyone by surprise. Indeed, it's even noted that a popular book prior to the war stated that a big general European war was impossible for economic reasons. Socialist of the period were fond of stating that socialism had no borders, and they meant it. So, from both the right and the left, a general European war seemed impossible.
What we often don't hear is that Europe certainly had not seen the end of war, and the claim that sometimes is made that there'd been no European wars following the Franco-Prussian War is just flat out wrong. The claim about wars being thought to be impossible really apply only to wars between the major European powers, or to a general war (i.e., the equivalent of a continental war).
In reality, the entire Balkans had been engaged in one war after another in the years running up to World War One. Turkey and Greece also fought prior to World War One, in the 20th Century.
Turkish soldiers prior to World War One.
Russia, a major European power, fought a major war with Japan, a major rising power. Granted, that's not a European war, but it was a bit war. It could have caused a European war as the Imperial Russian Atlantic fleet actually sank a British fishing fleet in the North Sea under the panicky belief that the fishing boats were Japanese torpedo boats (a bizarre error), but the British wisely let cooler heads prevail.
Japanese cartoon depiction of Russian cavalryman, Russo Japanese War.
And of course the British were fighting a transplanted European enemy in southern Africa at the start of the 20th Century.
Of course, none of these were general European wars, i.e., wars between the great European powers, in Europe. Some involved great European powers, but not against each other. The point is, however, that the often stated claim that Europeans had somehow grown bored with Peace is just wrong. Some of the European countries had been in major wars well within a generational experience.
The war pitted unqualified democracy against unqualified totalitarianism, and the rights of small nations.
I don't mean to be revisionist here, and launch of Noam Chomsky like on some deluded Marxist vision of the war, and it's already often noted that one of the major Allies, Imperial Russia, was not a democracy. Still, this claim should come with an asterisks.
The reason for that is that every major combatant in the war was part of an imperial system, and imperial systems, to varying degrees, are anti democratic themselves.
It is certainly the case that the Central Powers in the war, together with the Allied Power of Imperial Russia, were not democracies. Apologist for Germany sometimes note that it had a Reichstag with a broad theoretical franchise, but theoretical must be emphasized there. The real power in Germany was in the traditional, mostly Prussian, landed class of which the crown was part. The parliament was not governing the country in a complete sense. Likewise, the Russians had an assembly, but it certainly wasn't in control, nor was the Austro Hungarian political system democratic in any meaningful sense. As I'll probably note elsewhere, it was, in my view, the strenuous efforts to keep the lid on democratic expression in these Old Order countries that caused the fermentation of dissent, yielding in the poisonous brew of Communism and Fascism.
Poster for relief in the Near East. Of the nations listed, Armenia would not secure nationhood by way of the war, although this poster depicts an Armenian girl. Syria would emerge a French mandate. Persia would be a British client state for many years.
But something we should note is that even democratic countries were comfortable with having overseas empires at the time, and in some cases even local empires. And these aren't really democratic. So, while a country like France could fight for its self defense and democracy, it could still feel okay about running the show non democratically in Indochina or Algeria. Even the United States, which was an anti imperial power, was still fighting a guerrilla war in the Philippines running up to World War One, even though we'd stated our intent to ultimately free it.
Now, some of this must be balanced a bit. The British Empire was the largest in the world, and therefore is frequently one of the most criticized, but it did have an amazingly good record for developing democratic institutions and setting their former colonies out into the world as British Dominions. Canada, Australia and New Zealand were all domestically self governing leading up to World War One, although the British Parliament retained control of foreign affairs to some degree for each (including the right to declare war on their behalf.) This was also the case for South Africa. Indian was well on its way towards an anticipated dominion status, with the only real question being when, as opposed to if. As noted, the US declared itself set to follow suit after the Philippines were sufficiently schooled, in our opinion, on democracy, something that would take another 30 years and a second world war.
To make this story a bit odder, however, we should also realize that it wasn't the case that the Central Powers were universally for suppressing the national dreams of small European nations, and the Allies universally in favor of the right of self determination, no matter what people thought of Wilson's Fourteen Points. Indeed, while we hardly recall it today, Germany back independence for several nations during the war. Granted, it did so for its own reasons, but it did it.
A really confusing example of this is provided by Poland. In regard to Poland and Germany, we tend to think that Poland was carved out of the fallen German and Russian imperial regimes and restored to nationhood by the Allied victory in World War One, until Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union gobbled it back up in 1939. And that is partially true.
But forgotten is the fact that the Poles were proactive in seeking independence during the Great War and during the early stages of the Russian Revolution, and that the Germans backed them in part. Germany, which occupied part of the Polish national soil itself, did this as Imperial Russia occupied more of it. Perhaps it was being dangerously cynical, but Germany sponsored Polish nationalist in a German supplied, trained and controlled Polish revolutionary army. They weren't the only Polish rebels in the field, however, as a much more left wing socialist native revolutionary movement had its own rebels in the field, largely behind Russian lines. When Russia bowed out of the war, Polish soldiers in the Imperial Russian Army discharged themselves, sometimes asking their Russian officers to go along (who largely declined) and went home. Poland was effectively born, but there was a tense period, even lasting after the Versailles Treaty, in which conservative German trained Poles and left wing Polish rebels stared each other down. Eventually the divisions were worked out and Poland was born, even though the boundaries of Poland were not.
As if things weren't complicated enough, while there were anti Russian German sponsored Polish troops fighting in the East, and independent leftist Polish rebels fighting there also, the Allies were recruiting Poles to fight the Germans. All with the same theoretical Polish cause of creating a Polish state.
They were not in part because another new state that the Germans backed was getting up and running, and that was the Ukraine. Everyone agrees that Ukraine is a real nation, but often missed in that is that the Ukrainians and the Poles are so close ethnically that its very difficult to for anyone, including them, to tell where Poland starts and Ukraine stops. Generally, about the most convenient dividing line is religious, as Ukrainians are pretty universally members of one of the Eastern churches, with some being Ukrainian Catholics (a Church which actually goes by another name), some being Ukrainian Orthodox, and some being Russian Orthodox. Poles are almost all Roman Catholics. This divide, however, was not regarded as sufficiently so vast as to prevent Poland from making a very serious effort at taking the Ukraine from the Soviet Union during the Russo Polish War in the 1920s.
During the Great War, Germany backed Ukrainian independence, again for its own reasons. The Ukraine came out of the war weak, and hit teetered for some time on the verge of independence and falling to the USSR, before it ultimately did that. A German backed Ukrainian state re-emerged during World War Two, with the Germans reprising their World War One role in those regards, but it was reabsorbed by the advancing Red Army in the same war, with some underground independence movements holding on into the late 1940s. And it reemerged again with the fall of the USSR, and is int the news, nervously, again today.
Probably the most successful example of German backing the national aspirations of a small nations comes in the form of Finland. Finland's history is odd in any event, but it had become a Russian vassal many decades before. As such, it tended to have a fair degree of independence, up until the late 19th Century and early 20th Century, when the Russians, already sensing the problems that would ultimately drag the empire down, began to try to solidify the central authority of Moscow, which did not sit well with the Finns, who were really a foreign people. During World War One the Germans armed and equipped Finnish Jaegers who fought on the German side, seeking independence for their nation. When Imperial Russia fell, they got it, but went almost immediately into a civil war, not being able to avoid the situation that Poland ultimately did. In that war, the better armed and trained Jaeger elements became the backbone of the Finnish Whites, while urban Finnish socialist became the Reds. The war was a nasty miniature, uniquely Finnish, version of the Russian Civil War, and the bloodbath it created lingered on over the nation until the Soviet invasion of 1940 united the Finns against the Russians. Here too, however, Finland basically owed a debt of sorts to Germany as Germany had backed its independence against an imperial power.
Photos depicting Finnish Whites and German troops, in Finland towards the end of World War One.
While all of this was going on, the leading European democracy, the United Kingdom, ended up putting down a rebellion on its own soil, in the form of an Irish uprising in 1916, followed by the beginning of the terrorist campaign that would lead to the Anglo Irish War. This is a bit more complicated than might be imagined, as Ireland, by that time, did have the franchise on an equal basis with other citizens of the United Kingdom, and Irish support for the rebels was, at that time, much much weaker than generally imagined. Indeed, the best evidence is that the majority of the Irish opposed rebellion. It makes for an interesting complication of the story, however, and points out that some major European nations, while democratic, still contained areas within their own nations that had divided national loyalties.
This is not to suggest the entire Fourteen Points were baloney. The Allies, following the US entry into World War One, really did come to back the national aspirations of small or occupied European peoples. But the story is just somewhat more confused than that. Indeed, it's quite a bit more confused as not only did the Germans back some of the same peoples, for their own reasons, but the early USSR did as well, doing so under the belief that all nationhood was passing away rapidly anyhow, and soon the same nations would follow their Communist path. The USSR, however, got over that quickly.
And, as it can't help be noted, independence for small nations, really only meant small European nations, but that's a well known story.
It was the war that showed horse to be obsolete
American Remounts, World War One
Oh no, it was no such thing.
There's a widely held belief that World War One was the end of the military horse. It wasn't even close to that, but the belief is extremely widely held.
Dramatic British recruiting post, this was more accurate than supposed. The British and Dominion forces in fact retained, and used, sabers during the war, and did plan on using cavalry to exploit breakthroughs, which in fact they did in 1918.
In fact, every nation that fought in World War One used vast numbers of horses. Some, acknowledging that, will simply pass it off to the artillery and transport branches of the militaries, which most realize were nearly entirely horse powered at the time. That much is true. Movement of most things heavy in World War One, the introduction of vehicles and tractors (yes, tractors) aside, was principally done by horse. Most artillery at the time was horse drawn (and in the case of the Germans, this would continue to be the case through World War Two, contrary to the popular belief and German propaganda). Most transport, ie., the process of bringing supplies of all types, and equipment of all types, up to the front, was horse drawn as well (and in the case of the Germans again, would also continue to be the case for large percentages of its forces throughout World War Two). But the story doesn't stop there.
British artillery poster, reflecting actual artillery transport of the period, if also depicting a scene that no artilleryman would hope to get into.
People commonly imagine that cavalry had no role in the war. Even Lord Angelsey, who wrote the definitive multi volume history of the British cavalry throughout its history, admits to thinking that until he end up committing more volumes of his work to the First World War than any other British conflict. As that demonstrates, however, there was actually a lot of cavalry action during World War One.
The opening year of the war, when it was still a fluid war, saw all the armies use a fair amount of cavalry in the field. When the lines grew static, however, this did begin to change. The French, which used the "square" division, like the US would come to do, devolved their cavalry down to the division level, essentially eliminating large scale cavalry formations in favor of smaller ones. The thought was, on their part, that if they needed to they could consolidate these units. The Germans, who grew desperately short of horses during the war, did the same, repeating a process that they would do during World War Two, and then coming to regret the decision, just as they also did during World War Two.
U.S. Cavalry just prior to entering World War One.
The British, on the other hand, kept large scale cavalry formations throughout the war, using some of them as infantry from time to time. Their thought was that they would need them if they were able to break through. On several occasions during 1917 and 1918, they were proven essentially correct, but primitive communication abilities prevented their cavalry from really exploiting any breakthroughs until the very concluding months of the war. During that time, the British and Canadians engaged in some very large cavalry assaults.
Even the U.S. Army committed cavalry to Europe, contrary to what is generally supposed. Following the French pattern, the US mostly limited its cavalry to divisional reconnaissance troops, although the 2nd Cavalry was deployed to France as an intact cavalry regiment, and the 3d was partially so committed. The big American problem was finding horses for cavalry, which in the end caused it to adopt the French pattern by default, as we simply were unable to transport an adequate number of cavalry mounts to Europe. At the same time, however, we kept cavalry formations on the Mexican border, out of fear that revolutionary Mexico would join the Germans against the Allies. Cavalry had already proven its worth there in the Punitive Expedition.
As with our example along the Mexican border, the British, French, Germans and Turks all found cavalry vital in desert regions were they were fighting. Cavalry was extensively used in North Africa, along with its close cousin mounted infantry, the most famous examples of which are the Australian assault on Beersheba and the irregular cavalry of T. E. Lawrence. Such was also the case on the Eastern Front, where the Russians conducted several huge cavalry raids behind German lines.
Coming out of the war, most countries knew that the introduction of mechanization was going to impact he horse in war, but nobody was exactly sure how. Most armies were not as naive about that as they've been portrayed, but most correctly understood that the day hadn't quite arrived. Huge cavalry formations would go on to fight after World War One in the Russian Civil War and the Russo Polish War, but by the mid 30s most were exploring their options. Even at that, cavalry hung on into World War Two, particularly in the Soviet and German armies. The Red Army retained cavalry formations until 1953.
Finally, it was actually the lack of German cavalry that may have saved the Allies in 1918. By that period of time, German horse supplies were so depleted they simply couldn't deploy cavalry to exploit a breakthrough, and when they achieved it, their advance, being basically infantry only, ground to an exhausted halt. Appreciating what cavalry meant, panicky British sentries continually reported German cavalry as being just over the horizon, when in fact, it just wasn't.
All the weapons were new.
Another common misunderstanding about World War One, and often used to explain the battlefield conditions, is the belief that all the weaponry was new.. It wasn't.
Most armies that went into the war used weapons that had either been in their inventories for some time, or which were versions of weapons that had been around for some time. In truth, the utility of many of these weapons had been already proven in the Boer War and the Spanish American War, which had answered the nagging questions about many of them
German troops, with a large number of curious German spectators, work on a German tank that's fairly obviously a copy of the British model, if in fact it is not a captured British tank. The Germans never really did get the knack of tank warfare during WWI, which remained an Allied deal.
Rifle wise, this is certainly the case. The Germans went to war principally armed with versions of the 98 Mauser rifle, which they had adopted in 1898. That was a relatively new weapon really, but the Mauser itself had been proven in battle in prior version in the last decade of the 19th Century, where it had proven itself better than many competing designs. They'd retain the 98, in a short rifle variant, all the way through World War Two. The British went to war armed mostly with the Short Magazine Lee Enfield, a rifle that they'd developed form the Long Lee they'd used in the Boer War and whose service went back to the 1890s. The Russians used the Mosin Nagant, as weapon they'd adopted in 1891 and which they're retain in slightly altered form up until it was replaced by the AK47 in most units. Compared to these, the US's M1903 was quite new, but it was a Mauser variant itself, adopted after our Krag rifle was proven inferior to the Spanish M94 Mausers during the Spanish American War.
Pistol wise, semi automatic pistols were really coming into military service for the first time, but nobody will maintain that a pistol is a war winning weapon. In contrast, machineguns would come to dominate the battlefield, but they were almost all designs that date back to around 1900. New, perhaps, but not so new as to not have already seen battlefield use in various wars, such as the Boer War, or the Russo Japanese War.
Artillery came to dominate the Western Front, but most of the designs, once again, had been around for some time. They'd evolved, but not enormously. Most designs were around 20 years old at the time, some older, some newer.
Massive Austrian mortar.
What that really leaves us with, of course, is aircraft, submarines, tanks and gas. Gas, however, did not prove to really be a dominating weapon. It was nasty, and left a lasting impression, but nobody was going to win the war through gas. Those other weapons, however really were seeing use, or at least significant use, for the very first time. And they were all hugely significant by the end of the war.
Helmet-less Italian infantry goes into action against the Austrians.
The War disillusioned the masses everywhere.
This is partially, but not completely, true.
What the war really did was to destroy the old order, everywhere. Where there were existing democratic institutions, this translated itself into a wider franchise. The British, for example, feared a socialist rebellion following the war, but it was truly an idle fear. The UK expanded the franchise, and granted Ireland dominion status. The end had come for "Downton Abbey", but the nation didn't collapse.
Patriotic World War One Marine Corps poster. By 1919 the bloom was off the rose in the United States, but not elsewhere.
Where strong autocratic institutions remained the real power, however, they fell. The Kaiser left. The Czar and his family were murdered. The Austrian Empire was no more. The Ottoman Turks became just the Turks. Even some Allied nations followed through with this process, as ultimately Imperial Japan, which was strongly autocratic, would see its Imperial crown dominated by the army in the 1920s. Some weak democracies ultimately collapsed, as in Italy and Spain. And bizarrely, one last gasp to autocrats was made in some of the newly independent European states.
The British sacrifice of men in World War One surpassed that of later World War Two, but following the war the British remained proud of their role in the war.
But generally it was not the case that people came out of the war bitterly disillusioned about everything. That was more the case, frankly for World War Two.
Post war studies showed that, contrary to the myth created in the 1950s, British solders overwhelmingly were proud of their service and thought the war had been won, and necessary. France created an entire myth around the glories of its soldiery, even though those soldiers had stopped advancing in 1917 and could no longer be made to do so. Even in defeated Germany veterans were vociferous about their service and nearly worshipped, part of the process that brought about World War Two, as they refused to accept the reality of their defeat (and their rebellion at home, which they should have been very well aware of)..
Grim 1918 vintage German Freikorps poster, recruiting German combat veterans for the German civil war, immediately after World War One.
German Freikorps poster, recruiting veterans, based on an appeal to past German martial glory.
Perhaps only in the US was there really bitter disillusionment about the war. Americans, notoriously fickle about war, came to regard the war as a mistake by 1919 and were even hostile to returning veterans by that time.
There's not an App for that. WYDOT
Dear Wyoming Department of Transportation, you need an App.
There's nearly an App for everything, but not for Wyoming road conditions. I know I can sign up for email alerts and the like, but an App is what I really want, and what you really need.
With an App, I could worry just the necessary amount, without having to turn the email on, on my phone, and hear the "ding, ding, ding" stream of emails as every road in the state turned cruddy, save perhaps for the few I care about.
Come on WYDOT, give us an App.
There's nearly an App for everything, but not for Wyoming road conditions. I know I can sign up for email alerts and the like, but an App is what I really want, and what you really need.
With an App, I could worry just the necessary amount, without having to turn the email on, on my phone, and hear the "ding, ding, ding" stream of emails as every road in the state turned cruddy, save perhaps for the few I care about.
Come on WYDOT, give us an App.
Putting the Bond Issue in Prospective. Comparative costs.
Here's another Natrona County School District graphic that helps put the bond in prospective.
As this graphic nicely demonstrates, other Wyoming school districts have also had bond issues in recent years, and the proposed Natrona County one is the most conservative really. Other districts, including Carbon and Albany Counties, are funding much more of their recent construction via bonds. And in our case, the overall amount is naturally higher, as we have four schools, as opposed to just one. Albany County's bond, as we can see, nearly rivals ours in amount, with a much smaller population base and a single school.
As this graphic nicely demonstrates, other Wyoming school districts have also had bond issues in recent years, and the proposed Natrona County one is the most conservative really. Other districts, including Carbon and Albany Counties, are funding much more of their recent construction via bonds. And in our case, the overall amount is naturally higher, as we have four schools, as opposed to just one. Albany County's bond, as we can see, nearly rivals ours in amount, with a much smaller population base and a single school.
The Return of the Recent Comments Feature.
We have the recent comments feature back, but based upon my observations so far, it's sort of glitchy.
I like the feature, which I had to reload with code, so I hope it keeps on keeping on. I guess I'll adopt the view expressed below regarding it.
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I like the feature, which I had to reload with code, so I hope it keeps on keeping on. I guess I'll adopt the view expressed below regarding it.
Friday, February 28, 2014
The Wyoming Lawyer February 2014: Technology and the pace of practice
Just below, I have an item on Jack Speight's recent article in the The Wyoming Lawyer. In that, I only addressed his comments on the dress code of the 1960s, which was no doubt much like the dress code for the entire history of the Wyoming State Bar at that time, but not so much now. He also had a very interesting comment on technology and the pace of practice, which was:
One of the main differences between now and last century in problem solving is the pace of law practice. We have gone from manual typewriters, carbon paper, onionskin, Dictaphones and ditto machines, to the electronic revolution and the related social media platforms and unlimited websites. We are in the realm now of instant communication, instant crisis, and instant problem solving compared to the good ol’ days of reflection and analysis. Gone are the days of the black rotary phone on the edge of the desk and the IBM electric typewriters. Now we have handhelds of various sizes, shapes, and functions and apps from Smartphones to iPads to tablets. Regardless of how we communicate and represent our clients, our role as problem solvers has not changed in providing service to the clients obtaining satisfactory results and handling their problems successfully.
This is very much the case, and I'm frankly not too certain that the practice of law hasn't suffered as a result.
What the author notes about instant communications is very true. I was an early adopter of computer technology and use it a great deal. Perhaps I shouldn't applaud myself on that, however, as the computer had just arrived when I started practicing law, with the internet arriving on the scene almost at the same time. I'd been taught to use the new technology of Westlaw at law school, although we did did not concentrate on its use for research. When I was first practicing law, almost no firm had a Westlaw account and we went to the county law library in order to use their Westlaw terminal. We were always very careful about using it, and typically sought permission from a client to use it when we did, as it we were charged by the minute to use it. Now, every lawyer everywhere has Westlaw access and younger attorneys can't imagine a world in which it isn't the first thing that a person turns to when researching the law.
I was slower to adopt smartphones, and I've only had one so far. I went to a smartphone so that I could check my email anywhere, but like most busy lawyers, I even use text messaging in practice, albeit carefully.
The revolution in technology certainly has changed this aspect of the practice of law. It must have been the case that in earlier eras lawyers had more time to ponder, if you will, any one legal topic. Chances are high that they call carried more of a variety of legal topics as well, so the list of things they pondered was probably fairly large. But the need to respond within hours, or even minutes, was no doubt relatively rare.
Casper Star Tribune Editorial board: OK the school district bond
The Casper Star Tribune has changed its position (reluctantly, given the pools) and is now supporting the bond.
While I wish the Tribune would more fully endorse the pool, they finally see the wisdom of the bond and are arguing for it. The paper is very much endorsing the CAP enhancements, and essentially indicates that prior to the recent hearings it didn't fully understand the bond proposals. Indeed, it's indicating that its changed its position now that the proposal has been fully explained. It deserves credit for being willing to continue to analyze and to change its opinion, something that takes some degree of courage, but something which deserves respect.
I have to say, I appreciate the Tribune's current editor, even when I disagree with him, much more than the former one. He seems much more careful and thoughtful in his approach to things, and the overall quality of the newspaper has improved.
While I wish the Tribune would more fully endorse the pool, they finally see the wisdom of the bond and are arguing for it. The paper is very much endorsing the CAP enhancements, and essentially indicates that prior to the recent hearings it didn't fully understand the bond proposals. Indeed, it's indicating that its changed its position now that the proposal has been fully explained. It deserves credit for being willing to continue to analyze and to change its opinion, something that takes some degree of courage, but something which deserves respect.
I have to say, I appreciate the Tribune's current editor, even when I disagree with him, much more than the former one. He seems much more careful and thoughtful in his approach to things, and the overall quality of the newspaper has improved.
The Bond Issue: The actual cost
This graphic, generated by the Natrona County School District, nicely shows the actual cost to Natrona County property owners for improving the safety and relevancy of their schools. $100,000 is highlighted, although I don't know if that's the median value of a county house or not, real estate values have been rising here. But as the Tribune points out, even for the owner of a $300,000 home the actual cost is only about $65.00 per year, an amount a person with a home of that value would no doubt spend on a night out here, easily. Going to dinner, for a family of four in Casper, no matter where you go, is nearly always going to result in a bill over $80,00. So the costs for the bond are are quite minimal, particularly given the longevity and nature of the improvements.
For those just entering school, no doubt the scientific and technical additions at CAP will result in their graduating with better options in life, making the bond cost on an annual basis worth it in and of itself. So too with the swimming pools, with the 1923 pool at NCHS, coming down this summer, being a prime example, given that the investment there lasted for nearly a century.
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Wyoming Lawyer February 2014: Standards of Dress.
Fairly typical office attire for me, shirt and tie.
The Wyoming Lawyer February 2014 issue just came out, and in it there's an interesting article by Cheyenne lawyer Jack Speight. Speight's article relates to the topic of this blog in more than one way, as he discusses his practice dating back to the 1960s. I'll probably come back to another topic discussed in his very short article, but what struck me (and apparently him, even in recollection) was this item:
With fond remembrance of the mid- 1960s,Cheyenne attorneys had a helpful little booklet consisting of about 30 pages in a 5 ½” x 8 ½” format with the relatively shocking title “Minimum Fee Schedule.” In addition to the obvious, the last page of this helpful little booklet spelled out a proper dress code for working in the office on Saturday mornings.Only on Saturday, ties were not required but a sports jacket or suit coat was still mandated. Naturally, the good ol’ boys who created the “Minimum Fee Schedule” and dress code did not give any direction on appropriate office attire for women, even though in the mid-1960s Cheyenne enjoyed the services of two outstanding women attorneys, Brooke Wunnicke and Ellen Crowley
This item is interesting for a variety of reasons (I wish somebody would publish a booklet of minimum fee schedules now). The reason I note it here is due to the dress code.
When I was in law school I remember learning in some class, probably trial practice, that dress in court was addressed by a rule, which it was. Shortly after I graduated a new rule on courtroom decorum came in, which was less specific, in part, because the drafter of the rules were having a hard time handling the topic of female dress. It isn't that female dress was inappropriate, its just hard to describe. When I first started practicing we were told, however, what the rules were, and that there was a "warm weather" exception that allowed lawyers to dispense, in courtroom hearings, with jackets.
In the office there were no longer any formal rules for lawyers, but there were informal ones that were reluctantly dieing. In our office, and older staffer informally enforced rules and what a person could and could not wear. Generally, if we weren't going to court, we could wear khakis and polo shirts. I often, even then, wore jeans but not blue jeans.
Over time, this has really changed. I can't say that there are any more real rules anymore, in any office, in so far as I can tell. Many lawyers still wear ties everyday, or most days, but many do not. Some routinely wear jeans in about every office. It's been quite a change. In the courtroom the rules haven't really changed, of course, and there's even one judge who made it known that he doesn't appreciate khaki trousers in the courthouse.
The change clearly started coming in during the 1970s. I didn't have any experience with law offices at that time, but I do remember that doctors and dentist always wore ties. Dentist still seem to even now, but doctors often do not.
I can't say if this change is good or bad, but I do know that people expect members of various professions to have a certain look, even depicting them that way in popular media when it no longer reflects reality. Generals in the military are always depicted wearing their dress uniforms, policemen are always depicted in blue. Lawyers are depicted in suit and tie. While I violate this convention frequently myself, there's something to meeting these expectations.
The Bond Issue: The Mike Sedar Swimming Pool
The City of Casper's elected board, the City Council, has just voted to postpone rebuilding the decommissioned Mike Sedar Swimming Pool.
The old pool, which was ripped out either last summer or the summer before, was one of the principal pools in the town. It was a 25 yard pool, and as amazing as it may seem to some, it was used for AAU swimming competitions when I was a kid. Meter pools were rare at the time, and the pool had starting platforms at that time allowing it to be used in that fashion. Principally built as a recreational pool (when most recreational pools were of a conventional construction) it also had a side area for a high dive, which was taken out some time ago based upon some concept of the appropriate depth for that, which it didn't meet.
Now it isn't there at all and now the city is pushing back its plan to rebuild the pool, which was going to be rebuilt in a much more elaborate, recreational pool, fashion. The city noted that costs were going to be higher than what it anticipated but it also noted that it wanted to wait and see how the school district bond issue progressed. In other words, they recognize the need for a pool, but may hold back to see if the school district, whose needs exceed the city's, achieves success in the bond issue thereby giving the city a little breathing room.
This is a distressing development. In an era in which the news media here and all the government entities are telling us that the populations of the county is projected to rise, we seem reluctant to replace and repair (which is all we're really doing) those facilities that earlier generations of Casperites built, with smaller resources. Right now we''re taking out one high school pool entirely and hopefully will be able to replace it. Two others are in distress and need to be addressed. A city pool has been removed and there's some question as to whether it will be replaced. The old outdoor pool at Kelly Walsh was removed some time ago, and it was a city pool, and it was never replaced. A party took a serious run at trying to grossly restrict or take out a local rifle range this past year.
I'm not saying that a city needs to have everything, but in order to be a nice place to live it needs some facilities. And when the ones we have start to disappear and there's questions as to whether they'll be replaced, that's a long term problem.
The old pool, which was ripped out either last summer or the summer before, was one of the principal pools in the town. It was a 25 yard pool, and as amazing as it may seem to some, it was used for AAU swimming competitions when I was a kid. Meter pools were rare at the time, and the pool had starting platforms at that time allowing it to be used in that fashion. Principally built as a recreational pool (when most recreational pools were of a conventional construction) it also had a side area for a high dive, which was taken out some time ago based upon some concept of the appropriate depth for that, which it didn't meet.
Now it isn't there at all and now the city is pushing back its plan to rebuild the pool, which was going to be rebuilt in a much more elaborate, recreational pool, fashion. The city noted that costs were going to be higher than what it anticipated but it also noted that it wanted to wait and see how the school district bond issue progressed. In other words, they recognize the need for a pool, but may hold back to see if the school district, whose needs exceed the city's, achieves success in the bond issue thereby giving the city a little breathing room.
This is a distressing development. In an era in which the news media here and all the government entities are telling us that the populations of the county is projected to rise, we seem reluctant to replace and repair (which is all we're really doing) those facilities that earlier generations of Casperites built, with smaller resources. Right now we''re taking out one high school pool entirely and hopefully will be able to replace it. Two others are in distress and need to be addressed. A city pool has been removed and there's some question as to whether it will be replaced. The old outdoor pool at Kelly Walsh was removed some time ago, and it was a city pool, and it was never replaced. A party took a serious run at trying to grossly restrict or take out a local rifle range this past year.
I'm not saying that a city needs to have everything, but in order to be a nice place to live it needs some facilities. And when the ones we have start to disappear and there's questions as to whether they'll be replaced, that's a long term problem.
Monday, February 24, 2014
The Natrona County School Board votes "yes" on the bond issue
The School Board voted to submit the bond issue, discussed below, to the voters for an election to be held on May 6. I'll post the text of the issue when I have a chance, but here's a "huzzah" to the Board!
Numbers and history. How an inaccurate understadning of history leads to the innaccurate headline that the U.S. Army is being cut to pre World War Two levels
It's being reported today that the Department of Defense is preparing to reduce the size of the Army to between 440,000 to 450,000 active duty soldiers. This is being reported as cutting the size of the Army back to "pre World War Two levels", which is inaccurate. This, in turn, shows how not really understanding history, leads to some erroneous assumptions.
The cuts create the smallest size for the Army since 1940, but that fails to take into account that 1940 saw the introduction of the conscription in anticipation of World War Two and the Federalization of the National Guard. The size of the Army in 1939 was about 200,000 active duty soldiers, with there being an additional 200,000 National Guardsmen. When Congress allowed for the mobilization of the Guard in 1940, it also brought in Conscription. That may mean that there was very briefly a period, in 1940, when the U.S. Army had about 400,000 men in it, but that would have been very brief.
The current size of the Army National Guard is 358,000 men, which is an enormously smaller number than there were at the Guard's post World War Two Cold War height. However, the size of the Army Reserve adds another 250,000 men. In 1939, the Reserve was very, very small, essentially being made up of officers only, with a few supporting enlisted men. There really weren't any organized Reserve unis, outside of medical ones.
So, if fully mobilzed, for purpose of the comparison, the size of the Army in all is branches today would still be over 1,000,000 men.
In considering these numbers, we also have to keep in mind that the Army of 1939 (and 1940) included Army Air Corps, the predecessor of the U.S. Air Force, which presently has 334,000 active service members, and 178,000 reservists of all types. Therefore, to make the comparison fully accurate the branch that existed prior to World War Two, on the active side, would be compared to a present number of over 1,500,000 active duty personnel.
Still, it is quite a drop in numbers.
But it's not accurate to compare it to the pre World War Two Army.
The cuts create the smallest size for the Army since 1940, but that fails to take into account that 1940 saw the introduction of the conscription in anticipation of World War Two and the Federalization of the National Guard. The size of the Army in 1939 was about 200,000 active duty soldiers, with there being an additional 200,000 National Guardsmen. When Congress allowed for the mobilization of the Guard in 1940, it also brought in Conscription. That may mean that there was very briefly a period, in 1940, when the U.S. Army had about 400,000 men in it, but that would have been very brief.
The current size of the Army National Guard is 358,000 men, which is an enormously smaller number than there were at the Guard's post World War Two Cold War height. However, the size of the Army Reserve adds another 250,000 men. In 1939, the Reserve was very, very small, essentially being made up of officers only, with a few supporting enlisted men. There really weren't any organized Reserve unis, outside of medical ones.
So, if fully mobilzed, for purpose of the comparison, the size of the Army in all is branches today would still be over 1,000,000 men.
In considering these numbers, we also have to keep in mind that the Army of 1939 (and 1940) included Army Air Corps, the predecessor of the U.S. Air Force, which presently has 334,000 active service members, and 178,000 reservists of all types. Therefore, to make the comparison fully accurate the branch that existed prior to World War Two, on the active side, would be compared to a present number of over 1,500,000 active duty personnel.
Still, it is quite a drop in numbers.
But it's not accurate to compare it to the pre World War Two Army.
Natrona County School District Bond Vote
Tonight, February 24, 2014, the Natrona County School District will hold the second of its public meetings to take comments on the proposed bond issue, which will go to the voters, if passed, later this spring.
As Natrona County residents know, our single school district serves a population of at least 80,000 people and covers 5.376 square miles. To put that in a bit of prospective, the state of Rhode Island covers an expanse of 1,214 square miles. Vermont coveres 9,620 square miles. So, the county is about four times the size of the state of Rhode Island and about 60% of the size of the state of Vermont.
That means the single school district serves children that come to its schools from a huge expanse. The number of rural schools is not as large as it once was, in keeping with the reality that modern school requires modern infrastructure, and for the final stage of public schooling, high school, that is particularly true.
The district has four high schools, Natrona County High School, Kelly Walsh High School, Roosevelt and Midwest. NCHS and KWHS are by the far the largest of the schools. Roosevelt is an alternative school, set up for kids who seek the benefits of its programs, and Midwest is a small community on the edge of the county. Many Natrona County residents probably don't even realize that Midwest has a high school. As can be seen, the concentration of high schools is naturally in Casper, simply because Natrona County, in spite of its vast expanse, really only has six towns within it, a couple of which are no longer really full towns. Actual towns are the greater Casper area (Casper, Bar Nunn, Mills, Evanston), Midwest, Edgerton and Alocva. Towns that once existed, and are sort of still there, include Powder River and Arminto. The overwhelming majority of students attend NCHS or KWHS, which have huge student populations.
KWHS and NCHS are undergoing reconstruction. Built in the 1920s, it is simply time for NCHS. It's a beautiful school, but its facilities are dated. This is also true for KWHS which is not nearly as old, but like a lot of buildings built in later areas seems to have borne the test of time less well.
In Wyoming, school construction is basically funded by the state. Education is legally a "fundamental right" in Wyoming, and all of the state's children have the right to the same basic education. This has come to mean, both philosophically and legally, that the state's mineral resources, as reflected in income to the state, are distributed by the state, so that counties with low mineral production are not deprived of the ability to teach their children to the same standards that those with high incomes are.
This is not universal, however, as the state at some point determined that it would not pay for "enhancements". Naturally, the state was concerned about being asked to pay for high dollar athletic facilities and the like.
But what is, and ins not, an enhancement has turned out to be a tricky deal.
In the proposed bond issue, Natrona County School District No. 1 may be asking for funds that are not, in a real sense, "enhancements". They are necessities. The first of these is upgrades to existing schools for school security, something that cannot be ignored now that we have the ability to do it. We blogged about that in an recent entry here.
Directly related to safety is funding for three swimming pools, one at NCHS, one at KWHS, and one at Midwest High School. In a district that covers a territory as vast as that covered by some Eastern states, the need for this should be self evident. These schools will be lifesavers for some, and will benefit all. We have also blogged about that in this entry and in this one.
Finally, but not least in significance, we here in this area continually are told that our mineral extraction economy produces good jobs for local residents, particularly those who grow up here. At the same time, those of us who have lived here for all or the balance of our lives know that quite often Wyoming's biggest single expert is our young people, whom, in lean times (and we have a lot of those) grow up, graduate from high school, and then leave in search of work, never to return. We also know that the oil and gas industry is expressing a need for skilled employees, which in many instances they end up bringing in from out of state. And, additionally, if we're serious about educating our youth for the 21st Century, we have to admit that shops built in the mid 20th Century, aren't going to effectively serve that need. The Bond would fund construction of a Science and Technology center where students who wished to pursue these talents could. We have blogged about that here.
The bond deserves to pass. The School Bard deserves credit for taking this on. The people of Natrona County should come out to support them.
As Natrona County residents know, our single school district serves a population of at least 80,000 people and covers 5.376 square miles. To put that in a bit of prospective, the state of Rhode Island covers an expanse of 1,214 square miles. Vermont coveres 9,620 square miles. So, the county is about four times the size of the state of Rhode Island and about 60% of the size of the state of Vermont.
That means the single school district serves children that come to its schools from a huge expanse. The number of rural schools is not as large as it once was, in keeping with the reality that modern school requires modern infrastructure, and for the final stage of public schooling, high school, that is particularly true.
The district has four high schools, Natrona County High School, Kelly Walsh High School, Roosevelt and Midwest. NCHS and KWHS are by the far the largest of the schools. Roosevelt is an alternative school, set up for kids who seek the benefits of its programs, and Midwest is a small community on the edge of the county. Many Natrona County residents probably don't even realize that Midwest has a high school. As can be seen, the concentration of high schools is naturally in Casper, simply because Natrona County, in spite of its vast expanse, really only has six towns within it, a couple of which are no longer really full towns. Actual towns are the greater Casper area (Casper, Bar Nunn, Mills, Evanston), Midwest, Edgerton and Alocva. Towns that once existed, and are sort of still there, include Powder River and Arminto. The overwhelming majority of students attend NCHS or KWHS, which have huge student populations.
KWHS and NCHS are undergoing reconstruction. Built in the 1920s, it is simply time for NCHS. It's a beautiful school, but its facilities are dated. This is also true for KWHS which is not nearly as old, but like a lot of buildings built in later areas seems to have borne the test of time less well.
In Wyoming, school construction is basically funded by the state. Education is legally a "fundamental right" in Wyoming, and all of the state's children have the right to the same basic education. This has come to mean, both philosophically and legally, that the state's mineral resources, as reflected in income to the state, are distributed by the state, so that counties with low mineral production are not deprived of the ability to teach their children to the same standards that those with high incomes are.
This is not universal, however, as the state at some point determined that it would not pay for "enhancements". Naturally, the state was concerned about being asked to pay for high dollar athletic facilities and the like.
But what is, and ins not, an enhancement has turned out to be a tricky deal.
In the proposed bond issue, Natrona County School District No. 1 may be asking for funds that are not, in a real sense, "enhancements". They are necessities. The first of these is upgrades to existing schools for school security, something that cannot be ignored now that we have the ability to do it. We blogged about that in an recent entry here.
Directly related to safety is funding for three swimming pools, one at NCHS, one at KWHS, and one at Midwest High School. In a district that covers a territory as vast as that covered by some Eastern states, the need for this should be self evident. These schools will be lifesavers for some, and will benefit all. We have also blogged about that in this entry and in this one.
Finally, but not least in significance, we here in this area continually are told that our mineral extraction economy produces good jobs for local residents, particularly those who grow up here. At the same time, those of us who have lived here for all or the balance of our lives know that quite often Wyoming's biggest single expert is our young people, whom, in lean times (and we have a lot of those) grow up, graduate from high school, and then leave in search of work, never to return. We also know that the oil and gas industry is expressing a need for skilled employees, which in many instances they end up bringing in from out of state. And, additionally, if we're serious about educating our youth for the 21st Century, we have to admit that shops built in the mid 20th Century, aren't going to effectively serve that need. The Bond would fund construction of a Science and Technology center where students who wished to pursue these talents could. We have blogged about that here.
The bond deserves to pass. The School Bard deserves credit for taking this on. The people of Natrona County should come out to support them.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
A Trip Down Market Street, San Francisco, 1906
A real must watch. Traffic in the early automobile era. Thanks go out to John Morgan for this one.
Same film in HD:
The Bond Issue. Safety
As folks who read this blog (and there's darned few I know) are aware, I've written on several occasions about the upcoming Natrona County School District bond issue, taking the specific topics of the swimming pools and technical and vocational training up. The School District plan to address these topics is so well formed that I think that either one of them would merit the bond being passed in and of itself. The third topic of the funding, which I haven't addressed yet, certainly does, school safety.
This is a topic that's need is so self evident I would argue that no rational person can, after considering it, argue against it. Basically, the District proposes to add features to the existing grade schools to enhance their safety, through new entry ways, lighting and technical additions.
I will not dwell on the current age and why the District would rightfully consider such improvements desirable. Rather, I will point out something that people too often miss. As technology improves, and as experience teaches, if we can improve something within our reasonable ability to do so, we ought to. We particularly should do so where children are involved.
To give an example that is probably fairly obvious, consider the automobile of 1913. Not too safe, right? Mechanical brakes, no air bags, no seat belts, no safety of any kind really. We could make cars like that today. We don't. We don't, because we know how not to, and therefore we make them safer.
Buildings aren't automobiles, they're more permanent. But here too we retrofit builds that are old with sprinkler systems and fire alarms, and remove the asbestos from them with reconstruction calls for it. When we can make buildings reasonably safer, we can, and should.
The State of Wyoming funds new school construction, thanks to the funds that the mineral industry pays through severance taxes. But it doesn't pay for "enhancements". Before we complain of that, we should consider that around here "local control" of schools is a big deal. Well, here's an area that we control, and as those in control, we can and should act responsibly.
This is a topic that's need is so self evident I would argue that no rational person can, after considering it, argue against it. Basically, the District proposes to add features to the existing grade schools to enhance their safety, through new entry ways, lighting and technical additions.
I will not dwell on the current age and why the District would rightfully consider such improvements desirable. Rather, I will point out something that people too often miss. As technology improves, and as experience teaches, if we can improve something within our reasonable ability to do so, we ought to. We particularly should do so where children are involved.
To give an example that is probably fairly obvious, consider the automobile of 1913. Not too safe, right? Mechanical brakes, no air bags, no seat belts, no safety of any kind really. We could make cars like that today. We don't. We don't, because we know how not to, and therefore we make them safer.
Buildings aren't automobiles, they're more permanent. But here too we retrofit builds that are old with sprinkler systems and fire alarms, and remove the asbestos from them with reconstruction calls for it. When we can make buildings reasonably safer, we can, and should.
The State of Wyoming funds new school construction, thanks to the funds that the mineral industry pays through severance taxes. But it doesn't pay for "enhancements". Before we complain of that, we should consider that around here "local control" of schools is a big deal. Well, here's an area that we control, and as those in control, we can and should act responsibly.
Saturday, February 22, 2014
Friday, February 21, 2014
The Bond Issue. Modern technical and vocational training.
I've posted on the upcoming bond issue here several times before, but I want to switch gears a bit with this post, as I think that perhaps part of the story has been missed, and even when not missed, perhaps the need isn't fully appreciated. That need is for scientific and technical training, and this bond issue would fund a Science and Technology Center as part of the high school facilities for the district.
The need for something like this has been identified by those in the know for some time, but I don't know how widely that need is appreciated in the general public. It's really pressing.
Years and years ago, "technical" training was available in most high schools, and of course it's never gone away. Prior to World War Two a very high percentage of American men never graduated from high school, and the lack of a high school degree itself wasn't an impairment to obtaining employment for the most part. One of the richest men to ever live in this county, Fred Goodstein, did not have a high school degree, but simply started off working in his father's oilfield pipeyard as a teenager. He built that business into a huge success, and expanded from there.
But those days are really over. They are over in part because we live in the Age of Certification, in which having some credentials to obtain employment is a necessity, both because it demonstrates proficiency, and because as the number of high school and college graduates expanded, that became the means of winnowing applicants. That, in turn, caused a certain magic to attach to the certificate, legitimate or not.
But beyond that, the world simply has become more and more technical, making a basic level of introductory knowledge in adequate. To give a poor example of that, I think when I was in basic training in 1982 you could still get into the Army with a GED. As an artillery crewman, we learned how to operate a self propelled howitzer whose systems were all mechanical. Fire Direction Control, the unit that plotted the mission, was by far the most technical, and they actually still used slide rules at the time, to plot their fire missions. When I was later a Forward Observer, I plotted missions using a compass, binoculars and a map. Sometimes I used a BC Scope, a huge set of mounted periscopic binoculars.
Well, all that is a tying of the past and probably looks about as ancient to a modern artillerymen as a muzzle loading cannon does. Now the SP is highly computerized and so is everything about plotting the missions. A person, in order to do the jobs that required just basic knowledge on our part, now has to have a fair degree of technical knowledge.
Now, my point isn't that we need to boost high school education as the Army needs people with a technical background, although I will note that those entering the Army today must have an actual high school diploma. Rather, this is just one example of how much more technical the world is today.
To give another example, many years ago I worked on a drilling rig. It was all a simple mechanical rig. Most of the rigs in use today remain no more advanced than that one. But, that day is ending. I overheard some time ago, in the barber shop (that reservoir of many talk) from a drilling operator who was working on a new rig in North Dakota. He did not do his job from the drilling rig floor like they used to. He was in a warm, clean, inclosed high tech office attached to the rig. He, indeed, could operate all its systems without ever going outside the office, so the arctic North Dakota winter meant little to him. Rigs of that type are a rarity in the United States, but from talking with a tool pusher who just came back from overseas, they aren't rare outside the US. The irony, therefore, is that the US is actually behind in modern rigs, a fact that probably developed as our drilling industry was darned near dead for a long time.
Talking to local industrial employers, I know that they perceive that there's a lack of entry level skilled employees in the state. They'd like to hire them, and there's the work, but the employees aren't there. Why not?
Well, we just don't have the facilities at the high school level to train them. We do still train in some technical fields at the high school level. You can learn some automotive technology, small engine technology, and welding, for example. And that's great. But in order to keep up in this area, we're going to have to provide much more advance training as we enter the second half of the second decade of the 21st Century.
Take cars alone, as an example.
I still retain one old vehicle, a 1962 Dodge truck. I can work on it, as its as old as I am, and its systems are those which I grew up with and learned how work on. Quite simple, really. But on our more modern vehicles, none of which are new, I have no clue how to fix anything. They are all high tech.
And the mechanics who work on them have been accordingly trained. They're not shade tree mechanics who were really good and worked into shops. No, they're really trained. They have to be. And that's the direction things are headed. In ten years ago, as electric and hybrid vehicles become more common, this is going to become a highly technical field. And this will expand. It will not be that many years from now that even a thing like a snowblower will be high tech, or a lawn mower, designed not only to do its job well, but to emit little, and use as little in the way of resources as possible.
A person can say, of course, that all of this is fine, and that post high school courses of study can address that. But if we take that approach, it commits everyone to some post high school study. Should we do that? I don't think so.
Universities and colleges have increasingly become not only schools for advance academic knowledge, but advanced technical schools. That is fine, but students who do not wish to attend university or college, and not everyone does, should not be forced to do so. And a high school degree should have some immediate serious employment benefit outside of those which are the most basic jobs. Indeed, that was the original purpose of high school. The thought was that a graduate was ready to enter a shop, or office.
Indeed recently I heard an interesting author interview on the Priztzer Military Library podcast. The author had written a book about his interviews with very elderly World War One veterans, when they were in their 90s. One interview really struck me. The veteran was asked the simple question about joining the Army, but he gave his entire life history in a few short sentences. He'd graduated high school shortly before World War One, and during his last year of high school he'd been recommended to an insurance company. He'd gone to work there immediately after graduating, and save for World War One, he'd worked there his entire career until retirement, rising up in it.
Now, his story would have been impossible.
Of course, this isn't a technical story, in that he didn't enter technical employment, but my point is that here in Casper, where there are many industrial jobs, those jobs are going to get increasingly technical over time. Those who want those jobs, and the state and local community is always noting how these are well paying jobs, can be ready to enter them right out of high school, with the proper training. If we don't give them the proper training, they're going to have to obtain it through an additional couple of years of study, where the public funding for the training is lacking. That isn't serving those students well. This is another reason to back the bond issue.
The need for something like this has been identified by those in the know for some time, but I don't know how widely that need is appreciated in the general public. It's really pressing.
Years and years ago, "technical" training was available in most high schools, and of course it's never gone away. Prior to World War Two a very high percentage of American men never graduated from high school, and the lack of a high school degree itself wasn't an impairment to obtaining employment for the most part. One of the richest men to ever live in this county, Fred Goodstein, did not have a high school degree, but simply started off working in his father's oilfield pipeyard as a teenager. He built that business into a huge success, and expanded from there.
Dodge factory during World War Two. At one time, most high school graduates were qualified to do a job like this simply by having a diploma. This is no longer the case, as vehicles like this are no longer the norm.
But beyond that, the world simply has become more and more technical, making a basic level of introductory knowledge in adequate. To give a poor example of that, I think when I was in basic training in 1982 you could still get into the Army with a GED. As an artillery crewman, we learned how to operate a self propelled howitzer whose systems were all mechanical. Fire Direction Control, the unit that plotted the mission, was by far the most technical, and they actually still used slide rules at the time, to plot their fire missions. When I was later a Forward Observer, I plotted missions using a compass, binoculars and a map. Sometimes I used a BC Scope, a huge set of mounted periscopic binoculars.
The military has always been a source of post high school technical training, but more and more, you need to be at least somewhat proficient to even enter the service.
Now, my point isn't that we need to boost high school education as the Army needs people with a technical background, although I will note that those entering the Army today must have an actual high school diploma. Rather, this is just one example of how much more technical the world is today.
To give another example, many years ago I worked on a drilling rig. It was all a simple mechanical rig. Most of the rigs in use today remain no more advanced than that one. But, that day is ending. I overheard some time ago, in the barber shop (that reservoir of many talk) from a drilling operator who was working on a new rig in North Dakota. He did not do his job from the drilling rig floor like they used to. He was in a warm, clean, inclosed high tech office attached to the rig. He, indeed, could operate all its systems without ever going outside the office, so the arctic North Dakota winter meant little to him. Rigs of that type are a rarity in the United States, but from talking with a tool pusher who just came back from overseas, they aren't rare outside the US. The irony, therefore, is that the US is actually behind in modern rigs, a fact that probably developed as our drilling industry was darned near dead for a long time.
Talking to local industrial employers, I know that they perceive that there's a lack of entry level skilled employees in the state. They'd like to hire them, and there's the work, but the employees aren't there. Why not?
Well, we just don't have the facilities at the high school level to train them. We do still train in some technical fields at the high school level. You can learn some automotive technology, small engine technology, and welding, for example. And that's great. But in order to keep up in this area, we're going to have to provide much more advance training as we enter the second half of the second decade of the 21st Century.
Take cars alone, as an example.
I still retain one old vehicle, a 1962 Dodge truck. I can work on it, as its as old as I am, and its systems are those which I grew up with and learned how work on. Quite simple, really. But on our more modern vehicles, none of which are new, I have no clue how to fix anything. They are all high tech.
And the mechanics who work on them have been accordingly trained. They're not shade tree mechanics who were really good and worked into shops. No, they're really trained. They have to be. And that's the direction things are headed. In ten years ago, as electric and hybrid vehicles become more common, this is going to become a highly technical field. And this will expand. It will not be that many years from now that even a thing like a snowblower will be high tech, or a lawn mower, designed not only to do its job well, but to emit little, and use as little in the way of resources as possible.
A person can say, of course, that all of this is fine, and that post high school courses of study can address that. But if we take that approach, it commits everyone to some post high school study. Should we do that? I don't think so.
Universities and colleges have increasingly become not only schools for advance academic knowledge, but advanced technical schools. That is fine, but students who do not wish to attend university or college, and not everyone does, should not be forced to do so. And a high school degree should have some immediate serious employment benefit outside of those which are the most basic jobs. Indeed, that was the original purpose of high school. The thought was that a graduate was ready to enter a shop, or office.
Indeed recently I heard an interesting author interview on the Priztzer Military Library podcast. The author had written a book about his interviews with very elderly World War One veterans, when they were in their 90s. One interview really struck me. The veteran was asked the simple question about joining the Army, but he gave his entire life history in a few short sentences. He'd graduated high school shortly before World War One, and during his last year of high school he'd been recommended to an insurance company. He'd gone to work there immediately after graduating, and save for World War One, he'd worked there his entire career until retirement, rising up in it.
Now, his story would have been impossible.
Of course, this isn't a technical story, in that he didn't enter technical employment, but my point is that here in Casper, where there are many industrial jobs, those jobs are going to get increasingly technical over time. Those who want those jobs, and the state and local community is always noting how these are well paying jobs, can be ready to enter them right out of high school, with the proper training. If we don't give them the proper training, they're going to have to obtain it through an additional couple of years of study, where the public funding for the training is lacking. That isn't serving those students well. This is another reason to back the bond issue.
Jimi Hendrix Postage Stamp?
Rumor has it that the U.S.Postal Service will be issuing a Jimi Hendrix postage stamp soon.
Cool, if true.
Cool, if true.
They had been lawyers. . . lawyers who were notable in other fields.
As those who occasionally stop in here know, the purpose of this blog has been to gather, record and explore information for the purpose of a historical novel I'm theoretically writing. I have to emphasize theoretically, as I'm not getting much of it done.
Anyhow, I thought I'd make one of the characters a lawyer, although I'm not going to reveal too much of that plot line here. Given that, I started taking note of well known, or at least somewhat known, characters in history or even in today's world who have been lawyers or whom at least have a close connection with the practice of law.
It's been really surprising, to say the least. There's a lot of characters who are well known to history, or at least well known in their respective spheres of influence and activity, who fit this definition. A short discussion of the ones I've found so far is provided below. Perhaps, as people stop in here, they'll list others the are aware of.
Careers that I generally didn't note.
I should provide the caveat that I generally avoided listing any lawyer who became a politician in this list, but not exclusively so. There are a lot of lawyers who became politicians, or who are politicians, and it's generally not noteworthy, even if they are. Therefore, for example, I haven't listed an individual such as Abraham Lincoln. Yes, he was a very great man, but he basically went right from being a lawyer to being a politician. The fact that he remains so widely admired by the public shows that not all lawyers or politicians are scoundrels, but it doesn't fit the qualifiers of this list.
I made an exception, however, if they had occupied some other career prior to their political one. FDR, for example, had a law degree, but he also had been Assistant Secretary of the Navy prior to that, and his legal career is so buried that it tends not to be noted. Mitt Romney, the recent unsuccessful candidate for the Presidency, also had a law degree, but never used it, so he's listed. I thought about listing Barrack Obama, as he's never really practiced law, but did not. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson make the list, even though they were lawyers who became politicians, as they had done other things in between.
I did list revolutionaries, which are sort of a species of politician, as their revolutionary nature is just different., Hence, Lenin and Castro make the list.
Careers that seem to repeat
There are some entries that repeat, in terms of categories, which is interesting in and of itself.
One that notably repeats is that of Christian cleric. Indeed, there are fair number of saints who had been lawyers or who started off to become lawyers. No doubt that will spark some mirth, but it makes sense. Those souls were no doubt highly reflective and intellectual, and their having studied law, or their having practiced it, reflected that. But their thoughts obviously ranged to other topics, and in the end, they followed those thoughts.
Journalist of various types also reoccurs. That's not too surprising either, as one thing lawyers do is write. People either love writing, or they hate it, but it would be natural that a person who likes delving into things and writing would start to want to write about stuff other than cases.
Solder repeats fairly frequently. I'm not sure what this says, and I also suspect that there's a lot of "learned professions" that would be represented in any similar such list. At least one well known New Zealand general from World War Two, for example, started off as a dentist. General Leonard B. Wood was a physician.
Trailing Post
This is a "Trailing Post" which means that it gets additional entries from time to time, and then gets reposted as a current post. Indeed, that's already happened. I'll post the dates of new entries, so that people don't have to go back and re-read the entire thing every time that occurs.
________________________________________________________________________________Trailing Post
This is a "Trailing Post" which means that it gets additional entries from time to time, and then gets reposted as a current post. Indeed, that's already happened. I'll post the dates of new entries, so that people don't have to go back and re-read the entire thing every time that occurs.
John Abt
John Abt was an acknowledged member of the Communist Party of the USA and represented the American Communist party, along with other radical groups, in his post 1948 legal practice. The Verona files later revealed that Abt had been involved in espionage to some degree for the Soviet Union. He'd earlier been revealed by Whitaker Chambers to be a member of the Ware Group, a 1930s vintage Communist cell in Washington D. C. Prior to his public exposure as a Communist, he'd held various positions in the Federal agencies in the 1930s and 1940s.
Category: Civil Servant, Spy, Revolutionary.
Date Added: November 20, 2013.
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John Adams
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Adams was a 18th Century polymath who played many parts in life, including that of lawyer. Adams came from a well to do Massachusetts farming family and studied law early in his life. That lead him to a career as a lawyer, and farmer, both of which he loved. His legal career was not without controversy, as he undertook those British soldiers who were charged with murder due to the Boston Massacre.
His career as a lawyer was cut short due to the American Revolution, and he never was able to really return to it. Playing a prominent role in revolutionary circles, he hoped to become a Continental Army officer, as military affairs were another of his loves. He was never able to see that wish fulfilled. He went on to become an American representative to France, and later, of course, President. Of his various careers, farming was the only one that he was able to engage in throughout his life, so in some ways he's an odd example of somebody who loved the law, but wasn't able to work at it for most of his life. Indeed, almost all of his professional live can be characterized in that fashion.
Category: Diplomat. Civil Servant. Politician. Farmer.
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Augustine of Hippo.
Augustine of Hippo is justifiably famous for being one of the Doctors of the Church, a great intellect, and a major philosopher and theologian. In his early years, however, he lead a much different life. The North African Saint started off in a field which included law, and therefore was a type of lawyer, before taking up teaching in Rome. Ultimately becoming a professor of rhetoric in Milan, Italy, he underwent a profound crisis of conscience and converted to Christianity. Shortly thereafter, he was ordained a Priest, and became a Bishop soon after that. He was, of course, a major theologian and remains widely read today.
Category: Teacher, professor, Cleric, Theologian
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Elfego Baca
Baca was a New Mexican born Hispanic who is primarily recalled as a late 19th Century Southwestern gunman. His principal trade was that of being a lawman, at which he was very effective, but he was admitted to the New Mexico Bar after finishing a term of being a U.S. Marshall. He practiced off and on, and apparently steadily from 1994 to 1904, being in private practice that entire time. He also was a county attorney for two seperate New Mexico counties.
In spite of that, being a law man is apparently what he mostly craved, and even after being admitted to the bar he held a set of highly eclectic occupations. He was a representative of the Mexican government in the US at one time. He acted as a private detective, and even as a bouncer in Juarez Mexico. He held public office from time to time, and ran for some offices he did not obtain. At the time of his death in 1944 he had just completed an unnsecessful campaign to be the Democratic nominee for an upcoming gubenatorial race.
Category: Politician, law man.
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Arthur Seaforth Blackburn
On the July 23 SMH Today in History Thread:
BLACKBURN Arthur Seaforth: World War One. 2nd Lieutenant. Australian Forces Citation: On 23 July 1916, at Pozières, heroism in action.
Blackburn was a lawyer from Adelaide who had enlisted as a private in the Australian Army. He landed at Gallipoli as a scout and received a battlefield commission there. He resumed military service during World War Two and rose to the rank of general.
I don't really know much about Blackburn, other than that he was a recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest military decoration awarded by the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
What's somewhat surprising here is that Blackburn had enlisted as a private. We'd expect that a man with his education would have entered the service as an officer, but we might be surprised to learn that this wasn't as uncommon as we might suspect. From 1940 on through the Vietnam War it wasn't too uncommon to conscript lawyers as enlisted men into the U.S. Army. Their education was not regarded as necessarily predisposing them towards being officers and there were more than an ample supply for the JAG Corps.
Category: Soldier
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John Bodey
John Bodey was an English Catholic in the era in which it was very dangerous to be one. He studied law in France but returned to his native land as a school teacher. He'd left it in the first place due to the difficulty in practicing his faith in England, and his return was not to be a long one. He married upon his return, but was soon arrested and ultimately executed.
Category: Saint. Martyr.
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Inez Milholland Boissevain
Boisevain was a noted suffragette who died young in 1916 when she was only 30, after falling suddenly ill. She was also a lawyer, however, who had applied to, and been rejected by, several significant law schools before attending New York University. She was admitted to the bar in 1912, but is mostly remembered to day as a suffragette.
Category: Political activist.
Date Added: July 30, 2013.
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Frederick W. Bradshaw
Bradshaw was an attorney from South Carolina who is remembered to history as the man who organized, trained and lead the Alamo Scouts, the 6th Special Reconnaissance Unit, that famously served in New Guinea during World War Two.
Bradshaw entered the service through South Carolina's National Guard, in which he was serving as an officer prior to the war.
Category: Soldier
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Herbert J. Brees
Residents of Laramie Wyoming might recognize this name in the form of the name that until fairly recently applied to their airport, Brees Field. Brees Field was named for Herbert J. Brees.
Brees was born in Laramie in 1877, when it was still a frontier town. He group there and attended the University of Wyoming, graduating in 1897 and joined the 2nd U.S. Volunteers as 2nd Lieutenant in 1898, during the Spanish American War. Later that year he transferred to the Regular Army. He served initially in the artillery after joining the regular Army, but
thereafter served principally in the cavalry branch until his
retirement in 1941. One of this last roles in the Army was as the Chief
Controller for the Louisiana Maneuvers. He obtained a LLD in 1939. At the time of his retirement he was a Lt. General.
Category: Soldier
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St. John of Capistrano
Prior to being a cleric St. John of Capistrano studied law. He moved into a political position, as is not uncommon for lawyers, being appointed the Governor of Perugia by the King of Naples. He was, in that position, taken prisoner during a regional war and while a prisoner he began to study theology. Upon his release he became a Franciscan Friar.
Category: Roman Catholic Priest.
Date added: October 28, 2013.
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Fidel Castro
Castro joins some other famous Communists in having been lawyers. . . not sure what to say about that. Anyhow, he was a graduate of the University of Havana and a partner in the firm of Azpiazo, Castro & Resende. Really.
Category: Radical politician. Revolutionary.
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Cajetan (Gaetano)
An Italian born lawyer who graduated with a law degree from the university at Padua at age 24, he left the law and was ordained a Priest and became an influential figure in that role. He was a reformer prior to the Reformation.
Category: Saint. Cleric.
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John Cleese
British funny man John Cleese has a law degree from Cambridge but has never practiced law. I guess he decided to do "something completely different."
Category: Actor
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Robert W. Cook
Robert W. Cook was a Denver lawyer who left the practice of law to become a Catholic priest, and as a priest became the first President of the Wyoming Catholic College.
Category: Cleric, Educator.
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Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro
Cortes is known for being the Spanish conqueror of Mexico. But he had a legal education and his family had hoped he'd practice law.
Category: Soldier
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Howard Cosell
Howard Cosell is instantly recalled by anyone of a certain age as being the emblematic sportscaster, and the comic foil, with his own cooperation, for Mohammed Ali. But prior to that, he was a lawyer, being a graduate of the NYU School of Law.
Cosell actually became a lawyer as he thought it would make his parents proud and he passed the New York bar, a difficult bar to pass, in 1941. His career was immediately interrupted by World War Two, however, during which he was a Transportation Corps officer. He resumed his practice after the war but gave it up in the mid 1950s when he started doing some sports broadcasts locally, was good at it, and was offered a job with ABC.
Category: Broadcast journalist.
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Ann Coulter
Firebrand conservative columnist and author Ann Coulter is a 1988 graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and served as the editor of its law review while attending there. After law school she worked as a judicial law clerk for the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, a distinguished clerkship. She thereafter entered private practice and then went on to work as a lawyer for the Senate Judiciary Committee. She switched to journalism in the mid 1990s.
Category: Political Commentator. Author.
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Jubal Early
Early was a West Point graduate who served in the Regular Army only briefly before leaving it to practice law. He came back into the U.S. Army during the Mexican War, but became famous for his effective service to the Confederate Army during the Civil War. Early was a Confederate diehard whose effective generalship is considered by some to have extended the war by six months. After the war, he returned to practicing law, but he remained an ardent and outspoken Confederate and held extremely racists views. He was one of the authors of the Southern romantic "Lost Cause" view of the Civil War.
Category: Rebel. Soldier. Author.
Dated added: June 15, 2013.
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Fidelis of Sigmaringen
Fidelis of Signaringen was born Mark Rey in 1577 in Sigmarigen, Germany. Always very religious, he started off his adult years as a student of law and lecturer, ultimately becoming a courtroom lawyer, where his inclinations lead him to be an advocate for poor clients. His courtroom conduct was noted to be beyond exemplary, as he eschewed everything associated with invective behavior as a lawyer.
Nonetheless, his piety caused him to be uncomfortable with the law, and he grew increasingly uncomfortable with what he saw as the evils associated with the profession. He therefore became a Capuchin friar. He was murdered by Calvinist soldiers in 1622, exhorting God to forgive his attackers.
Category: Cleric.
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Francis de Sales
Francis de Sales was a 16th and 17th Century Frenchman who studied law and theology at the university at Padua, Italy. Highly intelligent and very sensitive, he struggled with his direction as a student but had committed himself to a religious vocation by the time he graduated university, in spite of having a tailor made career, wealth, and an advantageous marriage all set at his feet by his father, who wished for a legal and political career for his son. Instead, he became a devoted Priest and then Bishop, and is remembered today for his very effective and surprisingly modern writing style. He remains widely read today and is regarded as the Patron Saint of Writers.
Category: Saint. Cleric. Author.
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John Foster Dulles
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Senator, and more famously Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, was, before that, a practicing lawyer with the New York firm of Sullivan & Cromwell. Still somewhat of a controversial Secretary of State, Dulles was aggressive in his opposition to Communism and was one of the very few Secretary of States to be open about his Christian world view. He was a George Washington Law School Graduate.
Category: Politician, Civil Servant, Diplomat
Date Added: February 21, 2014
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Gandhi.
Yes, that's right. Gandhi was a graduate of University College London and passed the bar in 1891. He returned to Bombay to practice, but found he was so shy, he couldn't speak in court.
Category: Politician. Revolutionary.
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Rupprecht Gerngroß
Gerngroß is a truly enigmatic figure. Elsewhere on this list there are several German lawyers who were members of the July 20, 1944 plot against Hitler, although not every lawyer in the plot has been listed, due to this list's criteria. Gerngroß is unique, however, in that he sponsored his own plot very late in the war which was wholly unconnected with the much larger, and earlier, July 20 plot.
Gerngroß was born in China to German parents who returned to Germany following World War One. Of military age, he was a volunteer in the German Army in which he served as a communications officer. At the same time he managed to attend law school and graduated while still serving in the German Army. Having become disillusioned with the Nazis, he gathered together a circle of plotters who rose up extraordinary late in the war. He was only a captain at the time, and therefore he was also remarkable in that his position in a rebellion did not match that of the higher ranking officers who were involved in the July 20 plot.
Category: Revolutionary.
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Mikhail Gorbachev
The Soviet Union's last leader, and the man who can be credited with helping shepherd the country out of Communism, started off to be a practicing Soviet lawyer. Always of a somewhat questioning mind, he ran some risks with his views as a student during Stalin's last year. During that time period the Soviet Union banned new lawyers from being prosecutors, so Gorbachev went into Soviet politics and administration instead.
Category: Politician. Civil Servant.
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Glenn Greenwald
Glenn Greewald is columnist who has written for the British newspaper The Guardian and for Salon. He's been associated with the Edward Snowden story.
He is also a 1994 graduate of NYU's law school, and practiced as a trial lawyer for several years before evolving into a jounralist.
Category: Journalist
Date Added: January 26, 2014
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Võ Nguyên Giáp
Giap is famous for being the Viet Minh, and then the North Vietnamese, military leader who is sometimes credited with the Viet Minh's strategy in combating the French in Indochina and with North Vietnam's strategy against the US during the Vietnam War.
He also studied law and graduated with a degree in law form the University of Hanoi in 1938. He may not have passed his bar exam, however, and therefore never practiced.
Category: Soldier, Revolutionary, Teacher
Date Added: February 5, 2014
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John Grisham, Jr
Grisham is the author of a popular series of novels all involving lawyer. He gave up practicing law upon becoming a successful author.
Category: author.
Date Added: May 29, 2013.
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Savannah Guthrie
Guthrie is the new Today Show co-anchor, which is no doubt how she's likely to be remembered from here on out. She is, however, also a lawyer with a 2002 JD from Georgetown University. Having said that, however, she was already working as a broadcast journalist prior to that and continued to occupy that role, somewhat, while in law school. She practiced law from 2002 to 2008, after which she went back into journalism, a career switch which she seems unlikely to return.
Category: Broadcast journalist.
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John Wesley Hardin
John Wesley Hardin is a character known to every student of the American West. He was the son of solid American stock, descending from characters who played significant roles in the American Revolution. However, he was involved early in life in violence, not necessarily by his own fault, and took to a violent lifestyle. This ultimately lead to prison, where he studied law, and upon his release, he took the Texas state bar.
Hardin probably doesn't belong on this list, as he didn't leave the law to take up something else, but became something else due to his early, criminal, career. But I've noted him here anyhow as his violent life was not something he was able to escape. Even after becoming a lawyer he was involved in one negligent homicide and he died when an argument turned violent and he was outdrawn.
Category: Criminal.
Date Added: May 27, 2013.
Date Added: May 27, 2013.
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Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss was a Harvard educated lawyer who made a career in government service in the 1930s and 1940s. He rose in government service to a fairly prominent, if not publicly prominent, position in the State Department and was present at the Yalta Conference and involved in late World War Two and post war activities that were of great significance.
His is remembered, however, as his name broke into the public when Time magazine editor Whitaker Chambers revealed Hiss to be a member of a 1930s era Communist cell of which Chambers had also been a member. This resulted in two legal and has remained an enduring controversy, with Hiss having defenders to this day. The better evidence seems to support Chamber's accusations that Hiss was an underground Communist and involved in espionage. Hiss denied the accusations until his death and was active in trying to get records from the Eastern block to support his position. He was tried and convicted of perjury, served three years of a five year sentence, and lost his license to practice law. He ultimately had his license restored by the Massachusetts State Bar late in his life.
In spite of his supporters, it should be noted that Chambers had indicated that Hiss was a Communist as early as 1939 and 1942 and that there were at least to other sources that implicated Hiss as a Communist agent prior to Chamber's 1948 testimony.
Category: Civil Servant. Probably Revolutionary and Spy.
Date Added: November 20, 2013.
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Ives of Kermartin
Ives was the son of a noble family who studied law at the University of Paris, and following that went on to study Canon Law. He took Holy Orders and went on to be a significant parish priest in his diocese. His tomb was marked in his praise with Sanctus Ivo erat Brito, Advocatus et non latro, Res miranda populo. He is a Patron Saint of lawyers.
Category: Cleric
Date added: August 1, 2013.
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James the Merciful (James the Almsgiver)
This 7th Century saint had been a wealthy married lawyer but suffered early tragedy when his spouse and children died. He left his legal career to take Holy Orders and was noted as a very merciful and generous Saint.
Category: Saint. Cleric.
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Washington Irving.
The famed early American writer was a lawyer, having passed the bar, but as far as I know, his legal career was either brief, or non existant.
Category: Author.
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Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson, "Old Hickory", is remembered for being the hero of the Battle of New Orleans, the War of 1812 battle the U.S. actually won, even though the war was actually over at the time (the combatants weren't aware that peace had been reached), and then President of the United States, but he was also a practicing lawyer.
Jackson had lived a very rough and ready life in his native state of Tennessee and worked a variety of professions before being admitted to the bar in 1787. Even while practicing he engaged in other occupations, including being a "planter", a type of large scale (slave owning) farmer. He was also a militia officer, and in that role he rose to prominence due to the Battle of New Orleans, which later gave him sufficient national fame to allow him to convert the fame into a successful run for the Presidency.
Category: Farmer, Soldier, Politician
Date Added: January 25, 2014
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Jamie Jeffers
Jamie Jeffers is an attorney in Oregon who lost his associate's position in the Great Recession of the late 2000s. Indeed, that economic event proved to be extremely hard on attorneys in the United States in many localities and there has been a great deal of speculation as to whether or not the attorney draw downs reflected merely the economic crisis or rather reflect a deep and permanent shift in the position of lawyers in the United States.
Whatever the case may be, Jeffers started using his free time to become a blogger on British History. At some point he determined to make that his full time occupation, and has done so.
Category: Historian.
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Thomas Jefferson
The revered but enigmatic Jefferson stands in contrast to the nearly as revered and less enigmatic John Adams, with whom he shared an interrupted friendship and bizarrely coincident life. Both were lawyers, but unlike Adams, Jefferson did not like the profession and did not practice at it.
Otherwise defining Jefferson's career path would be difficult. In some ways he simply did everything. He was a farmer of the planter class, in terms of occupation, more than anything else, but he was also, of course, a politician and diplomat. And, he was an inventor.
Category: Politician. Diplomat. Inventor.
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Star Jones
Star Jones is yet another current broadcast journalist, or figure, who started off as a lawyer. Having been recruited in 1991 to offer commentary on the William Kennedy Smith trial, she has been in her second career from that point in time.
Category: Broadcast journalist.
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Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov
Yes, the big commie was a lawyer by training. I don't think Lenin actually ever practiced, however. He was a flaming radical from day one, so his law degree didn't even receive the same workout as Castro's. There was, therefore, no Lenin, Smith & Jones PC.
Category: Radical politician. Revolutionary. Sponsor of Genocide.
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Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori
Alphonsus Maria de Liguori was an Italian lawyer who achieved a certain measure of fame in that profession. Nonetheless, he was troubled by the occupation and related to a friend "My friend, our profession is too full of difficulties and dangers; we
lead an unhappy life and run risk of dying an unhappy death. For myself,
I will quit this career, which does not suit me; for I wish to secure
the salvation of my soul." This is an interesting comment in that it could almost read like the comments of many unhappy lawyers today that are occasionally discussed in the ABA Journal or state bar association journals.
De Liguori did indeed leave the profession and became a Priest and then ultimately a Bishop. He was the founder of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. He suffered from scrupulosity for much of his life, although he saw that affliction as a blessing in that he regarded it as having focused him on his conversion.
In some ways, I think this particular saint is one that lawyers should particularly take note of. He was a courtroom lawyer, but what caused him to abandon the law is the conditions that still afflict the law. Lawyers tend to forget the pain they inflict on average people, and come to view it as excused by the existence of their profession. But the pain is real, and that shouldn't be ignored. It's far too easy to be callous to that fact. This saint, however, seems to have become extremely sensitive to it, so much so that he left the law.
Category: Cleric. Saint.
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Robert W. Mackay
Robert W. Mackay is a Canadian author who has written a novel concerning the Canadian cavalry during World War One, loosely based on his father's experiences. In addition, however, Mr. Mackay has been in the Canadian navy and he was a rancher. He was also a lawyer.
Category: Author.
Date Added: May 29, 2013.
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Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela is remembered as a campaigner for full equality for blacks in South Africa, but he started off as a South African lawyer. He was born into Thembu nobility and started off towards a career as being a tribal adviser. Given that, he pursued a law degree and entered practice in the 1940s. Already active in the racial struggle in the region, he still found time to open his own practice in 1953. He rose to leadership of the African National Congress in the 1960s and ultimately came around to supporting violence in its goals, which lead to his arrest and imprisonment. After release from prison he resumed his efforts without violence and became President of South African in 1994.
Category: Activist. Revolutionary. Politician.
Date Added: November 7, 2013.
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Ruth Marcus
Marcus is a columnist for the Washington Post, and is well known in that role, which she has occupied since 1984. She graduated from Yale with a degree in journalism and went to work for the National Law Journal, which lead her to attending law school. While attending Harvard Law School she went to work for the Washington Post, where she has remained. She graduated from Harvard Law in 1985, but she's never practiced law.
Marcus is the author of one really fine example of career advice, that being "there are no mistakes under 30." That is, she feels people have absolute liberty to follow career tracks or goals that they later abandon while in that age bracket. With certain limits being implied, I agree with that.
Marcus is the author of one really fine example of career advice, that being "there are no mistakes under 30." That is, she feels people have absolute liberty to follow career tracks or goals that they later abandon while in that age bracket. With certain limits being implied, I agree with that.
Category: Journalist
Date Added: June 12, 2013.
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Robert R. McCormick
Robert R. McCormick was a legendary newspaper publisher, and the owner of the Chicago Tribune. Today, to the extent he's remembered (and in the publishing industry, he is remembered) that's what he's remembered for. But, McCormick was a graduate of the Northwestern School of Law, which he attended following his graduation from Yale. He practiced law for three years before moving over to the Tribune.
McCormick was from a wealthy family and it's hard to tell if he had any actual interest in the law, even though during the short period of time in which he practiced he was the founder of a firm. His real loves seemed to have been the newspaper industry, and more particularly the Army. Even though he wasn't a career soldier, he was a prewar Illionois National Guard cavalry officer and a WWI artillery officer. The Pritzer Military Libary was founded and endowed by the McCormick foundation, which remembers him as Col. Robert R. McCormick.
Category: Correspondent, Publisher, Soldier
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Brett McKay
McKay is a lawyer who started writing about the Art of Manliness while still a law student. Realizing shortly after graduating from law that he didn't care to practice, he converted his blog into a full time job, which now grosses well into the six figures annually.
Category: Author
Date added: May 30, 2013.
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Roche S. Mentzer
Roche S. Mentzer was a Cheyenne lawyer who was from a family of lawyers. A near relative of his (I'm not sure if it was a father or brother) was a judge in Cheyenne. Mentzer was also a significant legislator in the 1920s and early 1930s.
Mentzer is remembered, however, as being the commander of the 115th Cavalry Regiment, Wyoming National Guard, in the 1920s and early 1930s. It was while serving in that capacity that he tragically passed away, on July 10, 1933, while the unit was on a very extended mounted march. Mentzer fell ill in the Snowy Range and then died of a heart attack. The unit memorialized him with a rock cairn in Fox Park, although I do not know if it still remains.
Category: Soldier.
Date added: July 11, 2013
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John Singleton Mosby
Famous for his role as a Confederate partisan ranger commander, Mosby was a Virginia lawyer. After the war Mosby, who personally opposed succession, resumed practice but also was active in Republican politics. He practiced law in a number of occasions, and was sometimes a lawyer for the Federal government.
Category: Soldier
Date added: August 10, 2013.
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Jawaharlal Nehru
Nehru is remembered as the first Prime Minister of India and a central figure in the movement for Indian independence. He was also a barrister, a trial lawyer having been admitted to the English bar in 1912.
Category: Politician. Revolutionary.
Date added: February 21, 2014
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Oswald "Ozzie" Nelson
Nelson had a long career as an entertainer, starting off as musician and then becoming an actor, but he was also a graduate of Rutger's law school.
Category: Musician. Entertainer. Actor.
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Edgar Wilson "Bill" Nye
Bill Nye was a very widely read and famous humorist in the late 19th Century. He was also, however, a lawyer, or had been. He had "read the law" (i.e., studied independently and took the bar) and was admitted to practice in Wyoming, where he had relocated to, in 1876. He was never able to find sufficient work as a lawyer, however, and he worked a variety of jobs, including being the postmaster of Laramie, Wyoming. After his writing career took off, his legal career ended. He died at only age 45 of meningitis.
Category: Journalist. Civil Servant. Humorist. Author.
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William Owen "Buckey" O'Neill
William "Buckey" O'Neill was a Missouri born son of Irish immigrants who attended and graduated from the National Law School in Washington D. C. He thereafter took the Civil Service exam and briefly worked as a civil servant for the Navy. He didn't feel office work suited him, however, and he soon left that position for the frontier of Arizona, where he occupied a variety of positions, starting off as a newspaper man, but then becoming a judge, and then switching to the position of sheriff. He's famous, however, for leaving that position in order to join the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, the famous Rough Riders, in which he was killed while exposing himself to fire in Cuba. He was fondly remembered by that unit and was widely regarded as heroic.
Interestingly, quotes attributed to him are usually delivered in a folksy style, but he was actually a very well educated East Coast American, so if they're accurate, he acquired that speaking style after he relocated to Arizona.
Category: Civil Servant. Journalist. Law Enforcement Officer. Soldier.
________________________________________________________________________________
Steve Pastis
Steve Pastis was a tort lawyer, working for the defense, but didn't care of the anxiety it produced and the adversarial nature of the work. A fan of cartoons since he was a child, he began to work on his cartoons while still working as lawyer. He ultimately transitioned completely over to law by 2002, and draws Pearls Before Swine.
Category: Cartoonist.
Date added: May 29, 2013.
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Paulinus of Nola.
This French born 4th and 5th Century Roman Senator and lawyer left a lucrative public career to take Holy Orders after converting to Catholicism and renouncing his wealth.
Category: Cleric. Saint.
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Charles Perrault
Perrault is remembered today as the author of the Tales of Mother Goose. But he spent most of his career as an aid to his brother, who was an architect. Be that as it may, he was first a lawyer.
Category: Author. Architect's Assistant.
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John J. Pershing
Pershing is famous for being the second highest ranking general in U.S. history, having been promoted to the rank of General of the Armies during World War One (just below a theoretically higher, by act of Congress, rank posthumously conveyed upon George Washington). During World War Two the "five star" generals were only holding the rank of General of the Army, just below a still living Pershing.
But Pershing also held a law degree, something that's little known about him. He acquired it while an instructor in military science at the University of Nebraska, where he was posted by the Army at the time. He obtained the degree in 1893. Prior to going to West Point Pershing had been a school teacher, and the Army paid very little at the time, so he apparently had some thoughts of leaving the service, but of course, he did not.
Category: Soldier.
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Lee Pressman
Lee Pressman was a Harvard educated lawyer who is remembered today for being a member of the secret Communist Ware Group. Pressman served as a lawyer for the U.S. government in the early 1930s before going on to private practice, in which he represented the CIO. He was one of the Communists exposed by Whitaker Chambers and he admitted that he had been a Communist in the 1934-35 time frame. After the release of Soviet files his involvement in assisting the Communist underground movement exposed by Chambers proved to be more extensive than Pressman had been willing to publicly admit, even though over time Pressman himself had conceded elements of the story that validated Chamber's accounts.
Category: Revolutionary
Date added: November 20, 2013.
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John A. Quitman
Quitman was an eccentric who started off as a lawyer in Ohio and Mississippi, but only briefly. He went on to be a politician and planter, and a general during the Mexican War. After the war he served as governor of Mississippi, dieing of National Hotel Disease at age 58.
Category: Soldier. Politician.
Date added: August 10, 2013.
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John A. Rawlins
Rawlins was an Illinois born lawyer who had been practicing there since 1854 when he met U. S. Grant, while Grant was raising a unit in 1861 from Galena, Illinois. At first an officer in the Illinois volunteers Rawlins became a member of the Regular Army at Grant's request. Rawlins served as a staff officer, a position in which he was very capable, rising to the rank of Brigadier General. After the war, he became Grant's Secretary of War. During this period he contracted tuberculosis, and his loyalty to Grant was so strong that he declined to relocate to Arizona which his doctors recommended.. He died in 1869.
Rawlins was intensely loyal to Grant, who relied on him enormously during the war, but Grant oddly mentioned him hardly at all when he wrote his autobiography and he was not at Rawlins' bedside at the time of his death. Speculation has been made that this was because Rawlins had been such a guardian of Grant's reputation that in his later years Grant was embarrassed by that and did not wish to emphasize it.
Rawlins during the Civil War with his family.
Category: Soldier
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Geraldo Rivera.
Like Castro, or Lenin, I feel less than enthusiastic about noting Rivera's first career, but he was in fact a lawyer, having graduated with high marks from Brooklyn Law School in 1969. He caught the eye of local broadcasters who liked his style, and his lucrative career, doing whatever it is that he does, took off.
Category: Broadcast Journalist.
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Phil Roberts
Phil Roberts is a history professor at the University of Wyoming and an author on Wyoming history topics. He's also a graduate of the University of Wyoming College of Law who was admitted to the state's bar in 1977.
Category: Historian. Educator. Author.
Date Added: November 7, 2013.
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Manfred Rommel
The son of the legendary World War Two German field marshal, who was himself drafted at age 14 into the Luftwaffe in order to serve as an anti aircraft gunner, attended law school post war and became the long serving mayor of Stuttgart. He declined to run for higher office in Germany, in spite of his popularity, declaring that he was not an ambitious man.
Category: Politician
Date Added: November 11, 2013
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Willard Mitt Romney
Mitt Romney is a graduate of a Harvard program which conferred a joint MBA/JD. He never worked as a lawyer, however, having had a career in business and politics.
Category: Businessman, Politician
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt
A young Franklin Roosevelt.
FDR is famously remembered as the only four term President the United States has ever had, the President during most of the Great Depression, and the President for almost all of World War Two.
He also attended Columbia Law School from 1904 to 1907, dropping out after he passed the difficult New York Bar. He worked as a lawyer for a period of time thereafter but left the law forever when he became Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1913.
Category: Politician.
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Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt in 1911.
I probably ought not to include Theodore Roosevelt in this category, but I will note that after he graduated from Harvard he attended Columbia Law School from 1880 to 1882. Like his cousin Franklin Roosevelt, he did not graduate.
Part of the reason that I have included him here is that the requirement of law school attendance in order to become a lawyer did not exist at that time, and is actually a fairly recent requirement. "Reading the law" was the norm for decades, which is how such figures as Abraham Lincoln became lawyers. They studied law on their own and took the bar, or moved for admission to the bar. Law schools have been around for quite awhile, but now simply having graduated from law school generally means that the general public regards a person as a lawyer, whether or not they took the bar.
In Theodore Roosevelt's day, as with Franklin Roosevelt's day, having attended law school would have been a preparatory and associative advantage, but not a requirement for taking the bar. To become a lawyer, you had to pass the bar. Franklin Roosevelt did that, Theodore Roosevelt did not. TR simply left law school and did not return, his having gone into it in the first place having been an occupational diversion which was probably caused by family pressures about the young newly married TR being able to make a living. However, in modern terms, his two years of law school would nearly equate with graduating from one, and in his own time would have conferred upon him a fairly typical status for a person intending to take the bar. If TR had desired to take the bar, he would have been fully qualified to do so. Therefore, we're including him here.
Category: Rancher, Writer, Soldier, Politician.
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Allen Rosenberg
Allen Rosenberg was an attorney and Civil Servant in the 1930s and 1940s whose name appears in the Verona Files and who is implicated as having been a Soviet spy during World War Two. He was never charged with espionage.
Category: Civil Servant, Spy.
Date Added: November 20, 2013.
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Salvius of Albi
This 6th Century saint was originally a lawyer but became a Monk and then a Bishop.
Category: Cleric. Saint.
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Satyrus of Milan
Saint Satyrus of Milan had a career as a lawyer and Roman prefect before taking Holy Orders. I do not know a great deal about this 4th Century saint otherwise.
Category: Cleric. Saint.
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Charles H. Sherrill
Sherrill leading a preparedness parade in World War One, prior to the advent of the American entry into the war.
Sherrill threatened the Nazi Germans with a lack of support for their Olympic games over oppression of German Jews, but he later became one of those individuals who was impressed with both Hitler and Mussolini, being blind to the oppression of fascism and instead impressed with what seemed to be the efficiency of those regimes, a naive erroneous impression that wasn't entirely uncommon on the political right at that time, just as being impressed with Stalin's Soviet Union wasn't uncommon in the political left.
Category: Ambassador, Soldier, Athelete
Date added: February 14, 2014.
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Will Shortz
The famous "puzzlemaster" has never practiced law, but he has a 1977 JD from the University of Virginia.
Category: Specialized Journalist.
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W. Morgan Shuster
Category: Civil Servant. Author. Publisher.
Date added: August 8, 2013.
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Persifor Frazer Smith
Smith was a successful New Orleans lawyer who entered the Army, through the Militia, during the Mexican War and stayed in it thereafter. He was California's last military governor.
Category: Soldier
Date added: August 10, 2013.
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Ben Stein
Ben Stein is, by all accounts, a genius from a family of geniuses. The economist was also the valedictorian of Yale's 1970 law school class. Stein is eclectic in the extreme, and may be one of the few on this list who is actually widely known to have occupied a variety of careers. He came to the public's attention as the dry teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
Category: Economist. Actor. Author.
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James B. Stewart
Stewart is a writer for the New Yorker, but he's also a Harvard Law School graduate who worked as an associate for a New York firm in the 1970s. Stewart states that he realized that the law wasn't for him when it occurred to him that all the partners in his firm loved the law, whereas he only enjoyed his work.
Category: Writer
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Wanda Stopa
Stopa was a brilliant Chicagoan of Polish extraction who achieved the status of Assistant U.S. District Attorney in that town in the early 1920s, a phenomenal achievement for a woman of that time.
Perhaps a little too much of a woman of her (young) age, however, she married a Russian ex patriot count but engaged in an affair with a rich advertising executive. Wishing to divorce her husband and marry the executive, she was unsuccessful in advancing her plea to him to leave his wife, so she went to shoot him. She's remembered today for missing a shot at the executive's ailing wife, hitting instead a gardener, who was killed by the shot.
Category: Murderer. Socialite.
Date added: November 2, 2013.
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Jerry Springer
I feel even less enthusiastic about Springer than I do about Rivera, but there you go. The television personality has been a politician and is a 1968 graduate of Northwestern. I'm sorry to say that I don't find his law degree to be a surprise, as his presentation resembles that of certain attorneys really.
Category: Politician. Broadcast Personality.
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George Templeton Strong
Strong was a well known New York lawyer and professor of law who also started writing a diary at age 15. He wrote in it nearly every day, and the work, discovered in the 1930s, is a significant first hand account to events of his era. A significant and wealthy lawyer in his day, today its his journal, started at age 15, for which he is remembered.
Category: Private Journalist
Date Added: August 15, 2013
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Kevin Stroud
Stroud, like Jamie Jeffers, is a lawyer who has made a public name for himself as a blogger on a topic involving English history, albeit in his case, on the history of the English language. Unlike Jeffers, he remains in practice, but he is included here as his public name, at least to the extent I'm aware of it, has been in blogging on this topic with a very in depth treatment of the same.
Category: Historian
Date added: May 29, 2013.
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Theodor Strünck
Theodore Strunck was a German lawyer who became the director of an insurance company for which he was in house counsel. That isn't particularly remarkable and is actually a fairly typical career path for in house lawyers. What is remarkable, however, is that he was one of several lawyers who took part in the July 20, 1944, effort to overthrow Hitler, for which he paid with his life.
Category: Business executive. Revolutionary.
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Theophilus Scholasticus
I know almost nothing about Theophilus other than that he was an early Christian Martyr. He must have been a scholarly man, due to his title Scholasticus and he was known as "the lawyer." Based on that, we can assume that this early Christian martyr was a lawyer.
Category: Saint.
Date Added: August 1, 2013.
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James Francis Thomas
Thomas was an odd character with an odd story, who is mostly remembered today as being the military advocate assigned to defend Harry Morant and his fellows in their famous Boer War court martial. He's universally regarded as having given them a brilliant and effective defense, but he of course lost the case none the less (and perhaps should have). Be that as it may, that's what Thomas is remembered for today.
Thomas was a New South Wales Town and Country Solictor, however, while not soldiering. He was occupying that position when he volunteered to serve with those forces being raised in Australia during the Boer War. He was an effective combat officer, and saw some harrowing service in the Boer War. He was embittered, however, with his experiences in regards to the Morant court martial, and participated in the the writing of Scapegoat of the Empire by one of the surviving defendants. He also owned an interest in a newspaper at this time.
The publication of the book seems to have lead directly to a long decline after the Boer War, or perhaps more accurately it was part of the process that began with the Morant trial. At the time of the book's publication Thomas still held a commission in the Australian army, which he resigned due to some controversy with the army regarding the book. He began to limit his activities more and more, and practice law less and less. He seems to have had trouble financially which resulted, in part, from over-sympathizing with his client's plights, making his choice of law as a career a bad one. He even ended up a defendant in a suit by one of his former clients regarding his handling of her financial affiards, and he essentially refused to defend himself. This lead to his disbarment in the late 1920s. He speant the remainder of his life eeking out a living offering quasi legal services, dieing in 1946 at age 81, on a property outside of the town of his residence, where he had asked to be taken.
His inclusion in this list is probably questionable. Unlike the other personalities listed here, Thomas never really fully quit practicing law. But much of his early life was spent being a soldier, with perhaps the rest of his life spent dealing with its consequences. Technically the last 17 years of his life were spent outside the profession, as he had been disbarred. He is a heroic, tragic, figure.
Category: Soldier.
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Hiram Tuttle
Hiram Tuttle was a Boston lawyer from a family of lawyers. But what he's remembered for is being a legendary Army equestrian who twice medaled in the Olympics. Largely self taught as a horseman, Tuttle entered the Regular Army as a career officer after World War One.
Tuttle Riding:
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN08000/RUN08000/RUN08091.JPG
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN08000/RUN08000/RUN08090.JPG
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN08000/RUN08000/RUN08087.JPG
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN08000/RUN08000/RUN08085.JPG
Tuttle and his horse:
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN01000/RUN01100/RUN01120.JPG
Tuttle going down an embankment:
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN01000/RUN01100/RUN01128.JPG
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN01000/RUN01100/RUN01125.JPG
Tuttle jumping, October 1920:
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN01000/RUN01100/RUN01123.JPG
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN01000/RUN01100/RUN01121.JPG
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN01000/RUN01100/RUN01127.JPG
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN08000/RUN08000/RUN08092.JPG
Tuttle's Horse
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN01000/RUN01100/RUN01126.JPG
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN01000/RUN01100/RUN01124.JPG
Tuttle Riding:
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN08000/RUN08000/RUN08091.JPG
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN08000/RUN08000/RUN08090.JPG
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN08000/RUN08000/RUN08087.JPG
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN08000/RUN08000/RUN08085.JPG
Tuttle and his horse:
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN01000/RUN01100/RUN01120.JPG
Tuttle going down an embankment:
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN01000/RUN01100/RUN01128.JPG
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN01000/RUN01100/RUN01125.JPG
Tuttle jumping, October 1920:
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN01000/RUN01100/RUN01123.JPG
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN01000/RUN01100/RUN01121.JPG
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN01000/RUN01100/RUN01127.JPG
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN08000/RUN08000/RUN08092.JPG
Tuttle's Horse
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN01000/RUN01100/RUN01126.JPG
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN01000/RUN01100/RUN01124.JPG
Category: Soldier. Olympian.
Date added: July 28, 2013.
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Woodrow Wilson
There have, of course, been a variety of lawyers who have been President and I've generally omitted politicians unless there was some other reason to include them. That exception is why I've included Woodrow Wilson here.
Wilson is generally remembered for his academic career prior to being a politician, but he was also a lawyer. He only attended law school for one year, but that did not hinder a person from taking the bar at the time. He passed the Georgia bar, but only practiced for a little over one year. Wilson was, of course a reform politician, and once quipped; "I used to be a lawyer, but now I am a reformed character."
Category: Education. Politician.
Date added: May 29, 2013.
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Owen Wister.
Wister is famously remembered for being the author of the novel The Virginian. But, before that he was a Harvard educated lawyer.
He didn't like it much, however, and never really wanted to be one. It was due to his father's urgings that he pursued that career, but only briefly. Once he bagan to write, he left he law behind. Wister, it should be noted, didn't stop writing with The Viginian, which is his only really remembered work today, but also wrote other texts, including ones that could be regarded as philosophical.
Category: Author.
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Nathan Witt
Witt was another Harvard Law graduate who was exposed by Whitaker Chambers of being a member of the Ware Group, a Washington D. C. Communist cell. By that time Witt had risen to the position of Secretary of the National Labor Relations Board and resigned from it, as his hard left views were well known and generated a great deal of opposition. He invoked his Fifth Amendment Rights when investigated by the House Unamerican Affairs Committee and while his membership in the Ware Group seems established, if that meant anything more than that he was a Communist party member at the time he was acting as a Democratic bureaucratic is unknown. He may have become the leader of the Ware Group following Ware's death.
Category: Civil Servant with radical views.
Date Added: November 20, 2013.
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Greta Van Susteren
Known to most as a Fox News commentator, Van Susteren is a 1979 Graduate of Georgetown Law School and served on its faculty. She switched to broadcast journalism as a journalist during the O. J. Simpson trial.
Category: Broadcast Journalist.
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Berthold Alfred Maria Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg
The Von Stauffenberg name is famous to history as Claus Von Stauffenberg was the individual who was instrumental in putting together the July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler and overthrow the Nazis and was also the person chosen to plant the bomb that was to actually kill Hitler. Less well known is that almost every member, male and female, of the Von Stauffenberg family was in the plot in some fashion.
Berthold Von Stauffenberg was Claus's younger brother. Generally, serving in the military seems to have been the career path for the Von Stauffenbergs, if they were not simply semi idle aristocrats, but that normally reflected itself in an Army career in the cavalry branch. Both Claus and one of his other brothers, for example, took this path, and cavalrymen from the Paderborn Westphalia region of Germany were particularly prominent in the July 20 plot. Berthold, however, was not a career military man and was actually a lawyer. He joined the Germany Navy in 1939, where he served as an officer, albeit principally in a legal capacity. Like the other Von Stauffenbergs he was in on the July 20 plot. He was executed for his role in it.
I should note here that there were a fair number of other lawyers involved in the July 20 plot. The reason that they are not listed here is that were not in other occupations at the time. This is particularly remarkable as many of them had resisted the Nazis throughout the 1930s in their careers, something that was particularly difficult for professionals to do, and which took an enormous amount of personal courage.
Category: Naval Officer. Revolutionary.
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