(Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)
Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.
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Shiras was born on October 22, 1833 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. He was one of four sons of George and Eliza (Herron) Shiras, brother of George Shiras. The home of the family during his youth was on a farm near the Ohio River about twenty miles from Pittsburgh.
At the age of fifteen he entered the preparatory department of Ohio University at Athens, where he graduated in 1853. Thence he went to Yale. After a year of scientific study, he decided to be a lawyer and in 1856 obtained the degree of LL. B.
He was easily persuaded by old friends, the Herron brothers, to settle in preference to Chicago. On August 9, 1856, he was admitted to the Iowa bar.
In August 1862 he was commissioned first lieutenant and quartermaster of the 27th Iowa Volunteer Infantry, but was transferred to staff duty as an aide to Brigadier-General F. J. Herron before his own regiment was mustered in. Service as judge advocate took him campaigning with the Army of the Frontier, but he resigned in December 1863 and returned to resume the practice of law at Dubuque. His firm maintained an enviable reputation until it was dissolved by political preferment.
When the federal judicial district of northern Iowa was created, Shiras was appointed judge, in August 1882. Thereupon he made one of his partners clerk of the court, and in November of the same year the other partner, D. B. Henderson, was elected to Congress. His little manual, Equity Practice in the United States Circuit Courts (1889), is perhaps as much an evidence of his own interests as it is an attempt to aid the busy practitioner and the novice.
One of the most important disputes to come before him was an action in equity - the final episode in the long stream of litigation flowing from the ambiguous Des Moines River improvement land grant. The government presented a bill to confirm the title of certain settlers to land they were supposed to have obtained from the United States, but Shiras, following the precedents of previous cases, dismissed the claim, though he recognized the injustice of deciding the dispute in favor of either party and recommended that Congress compensate the injured settlers for the loss of their homesteads. The Supreme Court sustained this judgment, and Congress eventually followed his advice.
The occasion for his principal judicial contribution, however, arose in connection with the attempt of the railroads to avoid regulation of interstate traffic before Congress assumed control in 1887. In opposition to the doctrine of a legal vacuum created by the failure of Congress to exercise its power (Swift vs. Railroad Companies, 58 Federal Reporter, 858), Shiras in 1894 enunciated the conception of a national common law. His elaborate opinion in Murray vs. Chicago & North Western was cited with approval by Justice Brewer of the Supreme Court, and has become the accepted view.
He retired from the bench at the age of seventy, in November 1903, and thereafter devoted his attention to civic affairs until his death in 1916 in Sea Breeze, Florida.
Oliver Perry Shiras was the first United States federal judge on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa. His principal judicial contribution was in proscription of the attempt of the railroads to avoid regulation of interstate traffic before Congress assumed control in 1887. Thus, Shiras enunciated the conception of a national common law subject to independent application by the federal courts irrespective of state interpretation. He was the author of little manual, Equity Practice in the United States Circuit Courts was at once highly appreciated.
(Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)
He held that the binding force of the general system of jurisprudence as applied to the whole country by the federal government was not derived from action by the states or subject to abrogation by them. In the absence of congressional legislation, the common rules of the common law prevail.
Shiras was known for his wisdom, integrity, and precise reasoning.
In February 1857 he married Elizabeth Mitchell of Springfield, Ohio, by whom he had four children. On October 11, 1888, in St. Paul, Minnesota, Shiras married his second wife, Hetty E. (Spaulding) Cornwall.
