The Gilded Age was a formative era for the nation and New York, its most populous state.  The decades that followed the Civil War brought massive industrialization and urbanization to the Empire State, transforming the economic and cultural lives of its residents.  Great wealth was amassed by businessmen who have gone down in history as “Captains of Industry” and “Robber Barons,” but for the laboring masses, many of them recent immigrants, the Industrial Revolution meant low wages, poor working conditions and substandard, overcrowded housing.  It was also the era when the promise of Reconstruction failed, and while Black New Yorkers were mainly spared the harsh segregation and deadly violence of the South, the Empire State was not always a beacon of racial progress.

The term “Gilded Age” comes from the title of a novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner.  It refers to the process of gilding, of applying a bright, shiny layer of gold to a less attractive surface.  In government and politics, the Gilded Age in New York was a time of widespread corruption compounded by a highly partisan political scene that ensnared judges and lawyers in scandal.  In 1870, in response to the plundering of tens of millions of dollars from New York City’s municipal treasury by the notorious “Tweed Ring,” many prominent attorneys, including Samuel J. Tilden and William M. Evarts, came together and formed the New York City Bar Association, which took the lead in bringing William M. “Boss” Tweed and his cronies to justice.  The New York City Bar Association’s formation, followed by the New York State Bar Association in 1876 and the American Bar Association in 1878, introduced powerful constituencies focused on strengthening the courts, the legal profession and the administration of justice and which established the framework for the law as a self-regulating legal profession.

Massive population growth and booming industrialization greatly increased the demand for legal and judicial services.  The courts struggled to keep pace with rapidly growing caseloads.  By the late 1860s, the Court of Appeals was so backlogged that it took several years to hear an appeal.  In 1869, a responsive amendment to the Judiciary Article of the State Constitution established a new Court of Appeals with a chief judge and six associate judges selected by popular election to 14-year terms. Although the restructured Court operated more efficiently even this change could not relieve the pressures of calendar congestion, which would remain a constant problem through the end of the century.

The broad range of legal matters filed in the trial and appellate courts from 1870 into the 1890s offers a fascinating view into daily life and commerce in Gilded Age New York, touching on cases in tort, contract, criminal, matrimonial, family, civil rights, wills and estates, election, takings, intellectual property and environmental law.  These cases include lurid crimes that shocked the public; high-society divorces; abused and neglected children; and political corruption.  It is also during this period that the Court of Appeals started to emerge as the nation’s preeminent common law court, not only addressing the novel and important issues of its day but issuing decisions that foreshadowed the coming Progressive Era.  The Court of this era can be seen moving away from consistent protection of legal interests associated with economic development and toward a recognition of the harms of massive industrialization to workers, individuals and small property owners, particularly in context of expanded tort liability.

The legal profession, too, can be seen transitioning from the pre-Civil War era of the great courtroom orators like Daniel Webster.  With the rise of large corporations a new class of lawyer came into being, one who thrived outside the courtroom, an expert in corporate law and financial transactions skilled in drafting complex documents.