STEPHEN F. AUSTIN wanted to exclude lawyers, along with roving
frontiersmen, from his colonies in Texas, and hoped thus to promote a
utopian society. The lawyers got in, however. Their wit, the anecdotes
of which they were both subject and author, and the political stories
they made traditional from the stump, have not been adequately set down.
As criminal lawyers they stood as high in society as corporation lawyers
stand now and were a good deal more popular, though less wealthy. The
code of independence that fostered personal violence and justified
killings--in contradistinction to murders--and that ran to excess
in outlaws naturally fostered the criminal lawyer. His type is now
virtually obsolete.
Keen observers, richly stored in experience and delightful in talk, as
many lawyers of the Southwest have been and are, very few of them have
written on other than legal subjects. James D. Lynch's _The Bench
and the Bar of Texas_ (1885) is confined to the eminence of "eminent
jurists" and to the mastery of "masters of jurisprudence." What we
want is the flavor of life as represented by such characters as witty
Three-Legged Willie (Judge R. M. Williamson) and mysterious Jonas
Harrison. It takes a self-lover to write good autobiography. Lawyers are
certainly as good at self-loving as preachers, but we have far better
autobiographic records of circuit riders than of early-day lawyers.
Like them, the pioneer justice of peace resides more in folk anecdotes
than in chroniclings. Horace Bell's expansive _On the Old West Coast_
so represents him. A continent away, David Crockett, in his
_Autobiography_, confessed, "I was afraid some one would ask me what the
judiciary was. If I knowed I wish I may be shot." Before this, however,
Crockett had been a J. P. "I gave my decisions on the principles of
common justice and honesty between man and man, and relied on natural
born sense, and not on law learning to guide me; for I had never read a
page in a law book in all my life."
COOMBES, CHARLES E. _The Prairie Dog Lawyer_, Dallas, 1945. OP.
Experiences and anecdotes by a lawyer better read in rough-and-ready
humanity than in law. The prairie dogs have all been poisoned out from
the West Texas country over which he ranged from court to court.
HAWKINS, WALACE. _The Case of John C. Watrous, United States Judge for
Texas: A Political Story of High Crimes and Misdemeanors_, Southern
Methodist University Press, Dallas, 1950. More technical than social.
KITTRELL, NORMAN G. _Governors Who Have Been and Other Public Men of
Texas_, Houston, 1921. OP. Best collection of lawyer anecdotes of the
Southwest.
ROBINSON, DUNCAN W. _Judge Robert McAlpin Williamson, Texas'
Three-Legged Willie_, Texas State Historical Association, Austin, 1948.
This was the Republic of Texas judge who laid a Colt revolver across a
Bowie knife and said: "Here is the constitution that overrides the law."
SONNICHSEN, C. L. _Roy Bean, Law West of the Pecos_, Macmillan, New
York, 1943. Roy Bean (1830-1903), justice of peace at Langtry, Texas,
advertised himself as "Law West of the Pecos." He was more picaresque
than picturesque; folk imagination gave him notoriety. The Texas State
Highway Department maintains for popular edification the beer joint
wherein he held court. Three books have been written about him, besides
scores of newspaper and magazine articles. The only biography of
validity is Sonnichsen's.
SLOAN, RICHARD E. _Memories of an Arizona Judge_, Stanford, California,
1932. Full of humanity. OP.
SMITH, E. F. _A Saga of Texas Law: A Factual Story of Texas Law,
Lawyers, Judges and Famous Lawsuits_, Naylor, San Antonio, 1940.
Interesting.