jurist chief judge deputy attorney-general state's attorney
John Mitchell Robinson was a descendant of English Protestants who settled in Sussex County, Delaware, about 1700.
His grandfather, Ralph, and his father, Peter, were Delaware farmers; his mother, Sarah Mitchell, was the daughter of John Mitchell, a merchant of Milford, Delaware.
John Mitchell Robinson, the second son of this marriage, was born on his father's farm in Tuckahoe Neck, Caroline County, Maryland.
His father died while John was very young and his mother moved to Denton, Maryland, where he was educated in the public schools.
When he was sixteen years old he entered Dickinson College where he graduated in 1847.
He at once began the study of law with William M. Meredith of the Philadelphia bar, but shortly afterward he returned to Centreville and continued his studies in the offices of Judge Richard B. Carmichael and of Madison Brown.
He was admitted to the bar in November 1849 and immediately established himself in practice in Centreville.
In January 1851 Robinson was appointed deputy attorney-general for Queen Anne's and Kent counties. In November of that year a new constitution went into effect under the provisions of which he was elected state's attorney for Queen Anne's County. He held this office for four years (1851 - 1855).
While still in his thirties, Robinson had built up a lucrative trial practice which he hesitated to relinquish, but during the unsettled war days he was approached by a committee of citizens who persuaded him that his place was on the bench.
His election in November 1864, as judge of a new circuit, which comprised Kent and Queen Anne's counties, was the turning point in his life and for the following twenty-nine years he was continuously on the bench.
He was elected in 1867 to the court of appeals, the highest court in Maryland, and in 1882 he was re-elected.
In 1884 he was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate; his defeat, which he always attributed to the activities of Senator Arthur Pue Gorman, the party boss in Maryland, is one of the dramatic incidents in the political history of the state.
Robinson was appointed chief judge of the court of appeals on May 1, 1893, and retained the office until his death. During his years on the bench he delivered over four hundred opinions which have had a considerable influence on the development of the jurisprudence of the state.
It had been the custom for the judges in writing opinions to give the reasons for their conclusions at length but Robinson anticipated the modern style, emphasizing the conclusions and treating summarily the arguments and authorities.
His most important decisions were concerned with the validity of a tax imposed upon the gross receipts of railroad companies, in which his views prevailed over those of Judge Richard Henry Alvey, one of the state's ablest judges.
Robinson had, on November 19, 1857, married Marianna Stoughton Emory, daughter of Arthur Emory of "Poplar Grove, " Queen Anne's County; they had five daughters and one son.
