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Bar News - September 5, 2003 Charles Doe's Control of the Courtroom Remembered The following is an excerpt from "Memoir of Charles Doe" by former Chief Justice Jeremiah Smith, published in The Proceedings of the Southern New Hampshire Bar Association 1897. The article recounts Doe’s efforts, as both an attorney and as a judge, to elevate the level of civility in legal practice and in the courtroom. In 1859, at the tender age of 29, Doe was appointed associate justice of the Supreme Judicial Court, the state’s highest court. He served there until the court was abolished by the Legislature in 1874. Two years later, a change in political power resulted in the creation of the State Supreme Court, to which Doe was appointed as chief justice. He served as chief justice for 20 years until his death in 1896. He was, from the very beginning, a reformer. He insisted on having cases tried civilly, expeditiously, and upon the merits. Some bar leaders were unwilling to change the habits of a lifetime at the bidding of a younger man. The result in certain counties was a somewhat stormy season, which would have induced the majority of new judges either to submit to the old regime or resign the office in despair. Not so with Judge Doe. He stood his ground and carried his main points. In his mode of dealing with refractory counsel, as in most other things, he was original. Take, for instance, a scene in which one of the first lawyers of the state figured. When Judge Doe took his seat upon the bench he resolved that no counsel should ever, in his presence, be permitted to insult a witness, a resolution prompted by the recollection of the treatment to which he himself had been subjected when a witness at a time prior to his admission to the bar. In the very first year of his service [as a judge], a prominent lawyer, a man of character, but accustomed to the old style of practice, began to cross-examine a witness in an objectionable manner. "Mr. ____," said the judge, "I do not suppose that you intend anything offensive to the witness, but your manner might be construed by others as indicating such an intention, and I suggest that you modify it." Mr. ____ at once flared up, and replied that he should examine the witness in his own way. To his intense astonishment, the judge, instead of committing him for contempt, a move for which he was probably prepared and which might have gained him some popular sympathy, turned to the witness and said, "Mr. Witness, you need not answer any more of Mr. ___’s questions, unless you choose, and if you do choose to answer, you may do it in your own way." Mr. ___ did not care to persist and take his chance of being roundly cursed by the witness. He immediately abandoned the case and left the courtroom, swearing audibly as he went. I may add that the learned counsel afterwards resumed his former friendly relations with the judge, and that he wrote me years after (when the judge was out of health) to express the earnest hope that Judge Doe would not resign from the bench. Judge Doe early resolved never to commit counsel for personal disrespect to himself. But unruly members of the bar soon learned that there were other effective methods of keeping them in check. When a prominent lawyer, while engaged in a trial, made an impertinent remark to the court, he was quietly told that, unless he retracted that remark, his client would have to get other counsel. Whereupon the learned gentleman undertook to explain that he had not intended to use the English language in its ordinary meaning.
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