The History of the Connecticut Supreme Court
| Pages | 245 |
| Publication year | 2021 |
82 CBJ 245. The History of the Connecticut Supreme Court
Volume 82, No. 2, Pg. 245
June 2008
Wesley Horton is to be commended for presenting the history of the Connecticut Supreme Court in a manner that brings life to the decisions, the changes in structure, the inevitable conflicts among justices, and the philosophical development of the system of jurisprudence in its first several decades.
Moreover, while he shows his great respect for some of those who served on the Court, he does not do so with any bias in reporting the interplay of the justices.
Those who have known Mr. Horton are aware of some of his prior historical articles which he has written over the past two decades and most of which have appeared in this Journal.
He has a penchant for avoiding sterile analyses and has a sense of humor which he exercises to maintain interest.
In his Introduction, he states:
While I was reviewing the Connecticut Reports cover to cover, a strange thing happened. Justices I never knew came alive and in certain cases became old friends. Without the leveling influence of law clerks, who first came on the scene in 1959, it became clear to me who were the leaders and who were not, who were the scholars and who were the lightweights, who wrote well and who did not, who were likeable and who were not, who were hard workers, who were practical, who were stubborn, who had what philosophical or political persuasions, who dissented a lot or not at all, and, most important, whose statements of law could be relied on and whose could not. To know who is which is of practical significance to busy lawyers and judges who want to know quickly which opinions are and are not likely to assist the reader in understanding the law today. One is more likely to pause if an opinion is written by Oliver Wendell Holmes than if it is written by Charles Whittaker.
He also defined his goal:
So this is a practical book for lawyers and judges. The object is to put in one place, mostly chronologically, those elements of Connecticut legal history that lawyers and judges should know in order to do their job properly today.
The reader is given a clear opportunity to reach that goal. Following an extensive introduction and a review of the predecessors of the...
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