606 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



tion of Judge Gardner, was the natural recognition by the Common- 

 wealth of his desert, and of its desire to profit still further from the 

 service of this gifted son. He first sat with the court at Greenfield on 

 September 20, 1887; and his first opinion came down on October 20, 

 1887, in the case of O'Keefe v. Northampton, reported in 145 Mass. 115. 

 Other opinions followed rapidly. Fifteen opinions from his pen occur 

 in the first volume of reports issued after his appointment. They are 

 full, clear, simply stated, broad-minded, and sensible, and they cover 

 a wide range of subjects. His decisions grew in force with the passing 

 years; but, throughout, they are characterized by wide knowledge 

 of law, sound common sense, wise consideration of the ultimate con- 

 sequences of the principles laid down, and keen sense of justice, 

 expressed in clear, simple and forceful words, logical, coherent, per- 

 suasive and convincing. 



On December 8, 1902, Chief Justice Holmes vacated his office by 

 becoming a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and on 

 December 17 Governor Crane appointed Judge Knowlton to be Chief 

 Justice. Massachusetts has had many able Chief Justices, but only 

 Chief Justice Shaw would be ranked higher by the consensus of lawyers 

 than Chief Justice Knowlton. 



His industry was enormous. He wrote the opinion of the court in 

 eight hundred thirty-seven cases as an Associate Justice and in seven 

 hundred thirty-three as Chief Justice. He wrote also twenty-nine 

 dissenting opinions, of which four were written while Chief Justice. 

 It is worth remarking that the law as contended for by him in most 

 of these dissenting opinions was eventually established as the law of 

 the Commonwealth. He was fair and open-minded in the considera- 

 tion of a legal problem. His conclusion was the result of sound, logical 

 processes of thought; and, once reached, was not easily abandoned. 

 He had the courage of his convictions, the rock-ribbed determination 

 which is the result, not of prejudice, but of conscientious, painstaking, 

 laborious thought. 



Only Chief Justice Shaw has exceeded him in the number of his 

 written opinions; twenty-one hundred sixty-one in thirty years, as 

 against fifteen hundred ninety-nine in twenty-four years. 



His last opinion was Ryan v. Boston Elevated Railway, 209 Mass. 292. 

 Thus his writings extend through sixty-five volumes of Massachusetts 

 reports. 



