Frank Harris Hiscock was an American judge and lawyer. He served as a Justice of the New York Supreme Court and Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals.
Background
Frank Harris Hiscock was born on April 16, 1856 in Tully, New York, United States. He was the son of Luther Harris Hiscock and Lucy (Bridgman) Hiscock, both of whom died when he was young. The Hiscock family, originally of Massachusetts, had moved to Onondaga County in New York after the American Revolution. Hiscock's father practiced law and became active in local politics, serving two terms in the state legislature and as a member of the state constitutional convention of 1867. Hiscock's uncle, with whom he lived for most of his youth, was Frank Hiscock, a lawyer prominent in the Republican party and for a time United States senator from New York.
Education
Hiscock attended Cornell University, receiving his Bachelor of Arts with honors in 1875. He also studied law under the preceptorship of his uncle.
Career
Hiscock was admitted to the bar in 1878 and began practice in Syracuse with Hiscock, Gifford and Doheny. For almost two decades he dabbled in Republican politics and practiced law, until Gov. Levi P. Morton appointed him a trial judge on the state supreme court in January 1896. In the fall of that year he was elected for a fourteen-year term. Hiscock's rise within the New York judicial hierarchy was rapid.
In 1901 he was elevated to the Appellate Division, Fourth Department, and five years later he was appointed an auxiliary member of the Court of Appeals, the highest state tribunal, located in Albany. In 1913, at a Republican state convention in which old-guard elements lost control, Hiscock was nominated for a full term as associate judge of the Court of Appeals. Despite the failure of bar association leaders in the state to persuade the Democrats to give him their endorsement, Hiscock was easily elected, drawing strong support from independent voters. Three years later, amid a Republican sweep of the state, he was elected to a ten-year term as chief judge.
As might have been expected from his early career on the bench, he was willing to expand the doctrine of police power to allow restraints on personal liberty not only to promote "safety, health and morals" but also to ensure "the greatest welfare of the people" by increasing "public convenience or general prosperity" (Wulfsohn v. Burden, 1925). Hiscock and his colleagues tended toward a "liberal" interpretation of remedial statutes in the direction of upholding the legislative function. In the field of torts, the Hiscock court moved gradually to establish new rules on the basis of "social utility, " leaning towards the doctrine of liability without fault. He was noticeably more reluctant to defer to social needs in private than in public law, especially in commercial and banking cases, being fearful to exercise the "power of embarrassing or confusing widespread processes of commercial life. "
Leaving office, to be succeeded as chief judge by the more adventurous Benjamin Cardozo, he went so far as to pay tribute to the ghost of Theodore Roosevelt and assured a gathering of the New York City Bar Association that the Court of Appeals had made "substantial progress" in bringing the law closer to "common sense and justice. " Returning to the private practice of law in Syracuse, which he conducted well into his eighties, Hiscock seemed to retreat from the tentatively innovative approach to jurisprudence that had characterized his service on the bench.
Called on to undertake a state law survey and elected first in 1929 and then for two successive years as president of the State Bar Association, he had little new in the way of advice for his profession. In his farewell address to the state bar, delivered in January 1932, he cautioned that criticism of delay in the courts was "much overdrawn" and made a point of belittling "doctrinaire and opinionated reformers. " He also had harsh words for what he called "those selfish and foreign-minded classes and groups" who were willing to violate the Constitution to achieve "some new nostrum or some selfish and un-American benefit. "
Having left the bench, Hiscock resumed activity within the Republican party. In 1927 he was expected to give the keynote address at the state convention but at the last moment had to decline for medical reasons. Three years later, he was selected to be permanent chairman of the party convention and was mentioned as a possible candidate for governor. He remained a loyal alumnus of Cornell, finally retiring as chairman of the board of trustees in 1938, after more than twenty years of service. After an uneventful final decade, he died in his home in Syracuse.
Achievements
Religion
Hiscock was active in Unitarian affairs.
Politics
Hiscock was a Republican.
Views
As Hiscock himself explained his philosophy of law, it was difficult to classify. As chief judge he fretted over what he perceived to be "the clamor for paternalism and regulation" and "the dangers of hysteria, partisanship, radicalism, and class legislation, " fomented by Samuel Gompers and Robert La Follette. Nor was he much intrigued by what he called the "rather mystic" theories being advanced within the law schools of his day. Yet, seeing law as a practical matter, he wanted to adjust it where possible to new and changing conditions and thus try "to solve the problems of life in a well-ordered, fair, and reasonable way which will secure the approval of well-informed and intelligent opinion. " It was his assumption that a thorough understanding of the facts of a case allowed a court to diminish areas of controversy and sharpen the issues up for resolution.
Personality
Hiscock impressed his contemporaries not by brilliant or audacious legal reasoning but by hard work and patient good sense. Modest in manner and soberly deferential to all, he joined the Court of Appeals at a time of rising popular discontent with the American judicial system.
Connections
On October 22, 1879, Hiscock married Mary Elizabeth Barnes, the daughter of a Syracuse businessman; they had four children.