1827-1905
James C. Carter was born in 1827 in Lancaster, Massachusetts, the son of Major Solomon Carter, a prominent citizen of that town. He graduated from Harvard College in 1850 and Harvard Law School in 1853, the same year he was admitted to the bar in New York City.[1] Carter began his legal career in the law office of Edward Kent, son of Chancellor James Kent, before joining Henry J. Scudder in a law partnership that ultimately evolved into the modern law firm of Carter Ledyard & Milburn.[2]
Carter was said to possess one of the finest legal minds of his day and his “powerful logic, and absolute force and clearness of statement” made him a leading appellate advocate of the Gilded Age.[3] He argued many significant cases before the New York Court of Appeals, including:
[I]mportant proceedings for exemption from taxation instituted by the elevated and surface railroad companies and various foreign banks and other corporations; the claims against the city for the recovery of huge sums as alleged rents of private buildings leased for use as armories. . . [4]
Carter was a frequent advocate before the United States Supreme Court, including:
[T]he proceedings of the banks of New York City to set aside their tax assessments . . . with Mr. Carter arguing for the city; . . . the Louisiana Lottery cases, which raised the question of the validity of the United States statutes denying to lotteries the use of the public mails; in the Counselman case, involving the right of the government to compel the testimony of the accused before grand juries; . . . cases testing the claims for land grants made by the United States to aid the construction of the transcontinental railroads; . . . cases questioning the validity of Congressional legislation prohibiting the immigration of Chinese laborers . . . [5]
Carter joined the New York City Bar Association upon its formation to investigate and prosecute Boss Tweed and the Tweed Ring judges. “[F]rom that time to the present he . . . participated in every similar movement for the elevation of the legal profession or the purification of our political institutions.”[6] Carter served as special counsel for the city in “the famous suit to recover from William M. Tweed $6,000,000 for moneys abstracted from the city treasury.”[7] In that trial, he faced off against Tweed’s counsel, David Dudley Field II, Carter’s longtime opponent in the codification debate then dividing the New York bar (see below). Carter’s meticulous preparation and presentation of evidence, supported by testimony of accomplices and “unquestioned written evidence as to every figure and detail,” demonstrated “that a large number of claims against the city and county for work and materials were at Tweed’s instigation raised to nearly three times the amount expected to be received by the claimant,” with the excess split among Tweed and his cronies. The trial, which lasted for many weeks, ended in a jury verdict and large judgment against Tweed which he was unable to pay, leading to his incarceration in debtor’s prison after he had served little more than a year in jail for his earlier criminal conviction.[8]
As a result of his efforts to bring Tweed to justice, Carter gained a strong interest in municipal reform. He founded and served as the first President of the National Civic League and in 1875 was appointed by Governor Samuel Tilden to the Commission on Reform of Municipal Government, chaired by William M. Evarts.[9] Carter was the fourth President of the New York City Bar Association in 1884-1885, and served a second term as President in 1897-1899.
Carter was an influential legal theorist who believed that judges rather than elected officials and legislative bodies should have the primary role in developing and defining the common law. Carter became the central figure in opposition to the movement, led by David Dudley Field II, to legislatively codify the state’s substantive civil and criminal law. Field had already led a commission to draft a code of civil practice and procedure that was enacted by the legislature as a counterpart to the new court system established under the State Constitution of 1846. Field next undertook to draft codes of substantive civil and criminal law. However, thanks largely to Carter’s powerful opposition, the state legislature repeatedly declined to enact Field’s civil codes and did not adopt his criminal codes until the 1880s. While largely forgotten today, the codification debate divided the New York bar for several decades “and produced a seemingly unending stream of speeches and pamphlets.”[10] Although a minority of states, including California, adopted Field’s civil code, New York did not. Thus, large portions of the state’s tort and contract law remain uncodified today.
Carter, who never married, “was much sought after as a speaker at banquets and public meetings of all kinds, and his wit and eloquence lent a charm to every assemblage which he found time to attend.”[11] Carter retired from the active practice of law in his early 70s and spent his remaining years in the society of friends, living “an active and wholesome life” duck shooting in North Carolina and the Chesapeake and spending time at his country home on Long Island and on the moors of Scotland.[12]
James C. Carter died at his New York City home on February 14, 1905.
[1] McAdam et al., History of the Bench and Bar of New York State Vol.1, New York Hist. Co., 1897, at 75.
[2] A Brief History, Carter Ledyard & Milburn LLP, www.clm.com/firm/a-brief-history/
[3] “James C. Carter Dies After Brief Illness,” New York Times, Feb. 15, 1905.
[4] McAdam at 76.
[5] Id.; see e.g., Ping v. United States, 130 U.S. 581 (1889) (Chinese Exclusion Act); Counselman v. Hitchcock, 142 U.S. 547 (1892) (right to decline self-incriminating testimony); Ex Parte Rapier, 143 U.S. 110 (1892) (La. Lottery).
[6] Id. at 77.
[7] Id.
[8] William Draper Lewis, ed., George A. Miller, “James Coolidge Carter,” Great American Lawyers Vol. VIII, John C. Winston Co., 1909, at 10-11.
[9] New York Times, Feb. 15, 1905.
[10] Andrew P. Morriss, “Codification and Right Answers,” 74 Chi.-Kent Law Review 355, 1999, at 357.
[11] New York Times, Feb. 15, 1905.
[12] Draper, at 40.