This book provides a comprehensive history of the bench and bar of California. It covers the early days of California's judicial system and explores the various challenges and triumphs that have characterized it over time. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This is a comprehensive look at the Irish in Northern California from 1835 to 1900. Filled with anecdotes and insider history - this book is a unique piece of California history. The title, Forgotten Pioneers, embodies only half a truth in its application to the subject --- those early settlers in the wilderness of California, men of Irish birth or ancestry who contributed lavishly toward laying the foundations of a new commonwealth on the Pacific. It is the purpose of this book to reinstate in the rank where they belong, some, at least, of these overlooked men "whose character and achievement entitle them to the highest place in the respect and esteem of the people."

In Practicing Law in Frontier California Gordon Morris Bakken combines collective biography with an analysis of the function of the bar in a rapidly changing socioeconomic setting. Drawing on manuscript collections, Bakken considers hundreds of men and women who came to California to practice law during the gold rush and later, their reasons for coming, their training, and their usefulness to clients during a period of rapid population growth and social turmoil. He shows how law practice changed over the decades with the establishment of large firms and bar associations, how the state's boom-and-bust economy made debt collection the lawyer's bread and butter, and how personal injury and criminal cases and questions of property rights were handled. In Bakken's book frontier lawyers become complex human beings, contributing to and protecting the social and economic fabric of society, expanding their public roles even as their professional expertise becomes more narrowly specialized.

Excerpt from History of the Bench and Bar of California The beginnings of the law as we now know it, or, rather, of the orderly administration of a system of jurisprudence different from what had obtained, despite vigilance committees and other irregularities, was doubtless at 'san Francisco; for the administra tion of law, like litigation itself, clings about pro'perty rights, inheres in populous districts, and is a part of commercial life. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.