**REPRINT** Pomeroy, John Norton, 1828-1885. An introduction to the constitutional law of the United States especially designed for students, general and professional by John Norton Pomeroy. Boston. Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1883.**REPRINT**
John Norton Pomeroy was an American author and educator.
Background
He was born on April 12, 1828 in Rochester, New York, United States, the son of Enos Pomeroy and Sarah Strong Norton and a descendant of the seventh generation from Eltweed Pomeroy who left England and helped to found Dorchester, Massachussets, in 1630.
Enos Pomeroy, born at Buckland, Massachussets, in 1791, studied law at Ithaca, New York, married in 1816 and the same year settled in the then small village of Rochester where he practised for the remainder of his active life.
Education
John received the usual preparation in the public schools of his native town and in 1843 entered Hamilton College at Clinton with graduation in 1847. In Cincinnati he enrolled as a law student under Senator Thomas Corwin. Upon his return to Rochester, he studied further with Judge Henry R. Selden.
Career
After graduating in 1847 he taught school first in Rochester and later near Cincinnati. In 1851 he was admitted to the bar and began practice in his native town. It does not appear that much resulted directly from this venture, for one of his eulogists describes him at thirty-five as "a lawyer without practice. " It was not until nearly the close of his career, when he appeared in the celebrated Debris case and the railroad tax case before the United States circuit court for California, that he had an opportunity to display his real forensic ability.
After nine years at Rochester Pomeroy moved to New York City and in the spring of 1861 became the head of an academy at Kingston, New York. In 1864 he published his first book, An Introduction to Municipal Law. In the same year he received a call to the law faculty of the University of the City of New York (later New York University). It disclosed Pomeroy's acquaintance with Roman and other legal systems, as well as with the ideas which Bentham and Austin were then spreading in England. In 1868 he published An Introduction to the Constitutional Law of the United States in which he displayed the same scholarly and scientific method.
After about six years of teaching in the New York institution he returned to Rochester and devoted himself to writing. In 1874 he published a new edition, with ample notes, of Theodore Sedgwick's treatise on statutory and constitutional law, followed two years later by his own work: Remedies and Remedial Rights. In 1877 he published a pamphlet entitled The Code of Remedial Justice Reviewed and Criticised, containing his protest against changes in the Field Code of Practice, and A Complete Practical Treatise on Criminal Procedure, Pleading and Evidence.
Pomeroy's greatest opportunity came after he had passed fifty. On March 26, 1878, the California legislature established the Hastings College of Law as a department of the state university and Pomeroy was called to its faculty. He delivered the inaugural address, on August 9, 1878, and for the first two years he was the principal instructor. As others joined the faculty he found more leisure for his favorite pursuit - writing. He delivered a course of lectures at the college on "International Law in Time of Peace" which were edited and published posthumously in 1886 by Theodore S. Woolsey of Yale.
Just when he seemed to have reached the zenith of his fame and productivity, he was stricken with pneumonia and after only a week's illness he passed away.
Judge Deady described his argument in the former as "a masterly and exhaustive presentation of the case, " and Judge Sawyer characterized as "lucid, exhaustive and eminently instructive. "
Connections
He was married on November 21, 1855, to Anne Rebecca Carter at Savannah, Georgia. They had three sons and one daughter.