Roger Sherman Baldwin Foster was an American lawyer and author. He is noted for drafting the Tenement House Acts of 1895, the first comprehensive legislation on the subject in New York State.
Background
Roger Sherman Baldwin Foster was born on April 21, 1857 at Worcester, Massachusetts, and was a descendant of Reginald Foster of Little Badow, Essex, England, who emigrated in 1638 and obtained a grant of land in Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1641. His father, Dwight Foster, associate justice of the supreme judicial court of Massachusetts, married Plenrietta Perkins, daughter of Governor Roger S. Baldwin of New Haven, Connecticut, August 20, 1850.
Education
Having obtained his early education at the Boston Latin School, Roger Foster went to Europe, studied at the University of Marburg, 1873-74, and on his return completed his education at Yale University (B. A. 1878). He then entered the Columbia Law School, graduated LL. B.
Career
In 1880 Roger Foster was admitted to the New York bar, in the same year commenced practise in New York City. From the outset he ear-marked the branches of the law in which he subsequently became a specialist, by publishing a short work on The Taxation of the Elevated Railways in the City of New York (1883), and an address in which he discussed The Constitutional Aspects of the Conflict betzveen the President and the Senate (1886).
Then followed: The Federal Judiciary Acts of 1875 and 1887 (1887); A treatise on pleading and practice in Equity in the Courts of the United States (1890); and A treatise on Federal practice in civil causes with special reference to patent cases and the foreclosure of railway mortgages. The material in the two last treatises was subsequently expanded and incorporated in A treatise on Federal Practice.
In 1892, serious rioting by strikers occurred in Pennsylvania, resulting in the indictment of the advisory committee of the citizens of Homestead for treason against the state. This action induced Foster, when the question was still sub judice, to write an article, “Treason Trials in the United States, ” which appeared in the Albany Law Journal, October 29, 1892, wherein, though expressing no opinion on the pending case, he demonstrated that there was no precedent for a conviction of treason, except where there had been an insurrection of a general nature involving resistance to a general public law or an intention of subverting the government. Such was the cogency of this article that the Homestead proceedings were abandoned.
He was appointed by Governor Flower counsel to the Tenement House Commissioners in 1894 and in that capacity established the constitutionality of the act which declared that tenement houses in New York City previously erected should be furnished by the owners with water when so directed by the board of health, the court holding that it was a proper exercise of the police power of the state. He subsequently drafted the Tenement House Acts of 1895, the first comprehensive legislation on the subject in New York State.
In 1895 he published Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, historical and judicial, a Work which displayed great erudition and placed him in the front rank of constitutional lawyers.
In the same year, in collaboration with E. V. Abbot, he produced A treatise on the Federal income tax under the Act of 1894.
In 1896 he was instrumental in procuring the appointment of a receiver for the Bay State Gas Company, this provoking the animosity of Thomas W. Lawson, the Boston financier, who bitterly attacked him in his book, Frenzied Finance (1905), though all the charges therein were publicly retracted later.
He was retained in January 1900 with Charles J. Faulkner, as counsel for Senator William A. Clark of Montana, in the proceedings before the committee on privileges and elections of the United States Senate, consequent upon the allegation that Clark’s election as senator had been procured by gross corruption and bribery. His speech on behalf of Clark was considered a forensic masterpiece.
He lectured from time to time at Columbia, Yale, and other universities, on various phases of American history, and on classical subjects.
In addition to the works mentioned he wrote in 1914 A treatise on the Federal income tax under the Act of 1913, and in 1922 a small book, Liberty of contract and labor law, for the American School of Correspondence. He was also the author of pamphlets on varied topics and contributed to the press articles descriptive of his travels.
Achievements
Membership
Foster was a member of Skull and Bones, and Columbia Law School (1880).
Interests
Roger Foster was a frequent traveler, principally in countries outside the beaten track, and during 1912 spent considerable time in Asia Minor, searching for the sites of the seven churches mentioned in the Book of Revelations. He also subsequently visited Armenia, making ail unofficial report on conditions in that country at the request of President Wilson.
Connections
On February 22, 1921 Roger Foster was married to Laura Pugh Moxley.