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Memorial
The Michigan Alumnus 751
THOMAS ASHFORD BOGLE, '881, 1852-1921
PROFESSOR T. A. BOGLE AND THE PRACTICE COURT
At a meeting of the University Senate held March 20, a memorial to the late Thomas Ashford Bogle was presented by a committee from the Law School, composed of Professors Wilgus, Goddard, and Sunderland. While the memo rial is too long to reprint in full, that portion dealing with his development of the practice court in the Law School is particularly interesting.
Professor Bogle was born on a farm near Cambridge, Guernsey County, Ohio, May 14, 1852, but removed to Kansas with his parents when he was 16 year s old and attended the State Normal School at Leavenworth. Following a period of some eight years as a teacher and a school superintendent, he eventual ly took up the practice of law, for which he had been preparing for some time. His firm became attorneys for the Atchi son, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad and in 1883 he became prosecuting attorney for Marion County.
An Early Experience
This was at the beginning of the enforce ment of the prohibition law in Kansas in hos tile frontier territory. The work of the conscientious prosecutor in such surroundings was strenuous, and even dangerous. Mr. Bogle's qualities were of the first order for such a situation and he soon gained a repu tation for ability, courage and determination that extended throughout the state and into Oklahoma and Texas, where he was occa sionally called to aid in the trial of cases. On one occasion while he was prosecutor he had accompanied the sheriff to make an arrest of someone charged with a serious crime. When they reached home, on the train, they found a great mob gathered bent on lynching their prisoner. Mr. Bogle directed the sheriff to stay on the train and keep the prisoner. He got off, hunted out the leader of the mob and there and then informed him that if he did not at once call off the crowd, and if the prisoner was lynched, he would prosecute him and all who participated for murder, and never cease till he had convicted and hung them. The mob disappeared.
Mr. Bogle, however, was not satisfied with his knowledge of law and he came to the University where he was gradu ated from the Law School in 1888, even tually settling in Ann Arbor to practice his profession in the community.
Professor Bogle Joins the Law Faculty
In 1893 Professor Mechem of the Law De partment organized a court, which met evenings. A demand for its extension led the Regents to establish a Practice Court, to be in charge of a member of the Faculty. Two courses, one in Common Law and one in Code Practice, were to be given. Mr. Mechem did this during the second semester for the sen iors. A demand for a whole year of it followed, and Mr. Mechem was confronted with the alternative of giving up his other work or finding someone to take the court work. Mr. Bogle was invited to do this. There was much local opposition on the part of others who wished to get the place. Whether or not a knowledge of his ability, shown in a suit he had the year before prosecuted to the Supreme Court against the Regents of the University, had anything to do with Mr. Bogle's selection we cannot say. He, how ever, was chosen. He resigned the position of City Attorney of Ann Arbor, which he then held, and accepted. His name first ap pears in the Announcement for 1894-95.
The Practice Court was organized with a judge, clerk, sheriff, court-room, jury room, clerk's office, with the records, books, blanks and papers used in actual practice. A law term, a jury term, and appellate sessions were to be held; issues of law, raised by pleadings upon statements of facts, and issues of fact, arising from actual occurrences arranged for the purpose, were to be provided. The state ments of facts and the "arrangement" of the actual occurrences were to be prepared by the judge of the court. Issues of law were argued before and decided by various members of the Faculty to whom they were assigned. Issues of fact were determined by the verdict of a jury from the testimony of witnesses from "things actually seen and heard," after argu ments by attorneys and instruction by the judge of the Practice Court, in the way such trials are ordinarily conducted. This "jury trial" was new in the curriculum of any law school at the time.
The Growth of the Practice Court
The conception was that of Mr. Mechem. Its success depended upon the proper roan to carry it on. Mr. Bogle soon proved he was that man. For the first ten years of this work the senior classes were very large—from 200 to 300. They were divided into groups of four—two attorneys for plaintiff and two for defendants. Each group was to try one "law" and one "jury" case during the senior year. This required providing from 50 to 75 state ments of facts, involving issues of law, and "arranging" a like number of situations from which a jury trial could be evolved, each year, in addition to hearing and passing on all the papers involved in the preparation and trial of such cases, —tried as they might be pursuant to the laws of any state of the Union.
The work involved was exacting to the utmost degree, and tremendous in quantity, frequently requiring not only all the hours of the regular school day but night sessions till nearly midnight as well. For a few years after the Practice Court was established Mr. Mechem aided in "arranging" the cases to be tried by the jury. From the beginning and continuously since issues of law, after the pleadings were complete, were tried by mem bers of the Faculty. With these exceptions, for the first seven years the work of the court was carried by Professor Bogle. No one with a less robust constitution than he had origi nally could have stood it as long as he did; and it finally broke him down.
Professor Mechem, best able to speak of this work from the beginning, says: "He brought to the work that unfailing enthusiasm, that great gift of teaching, that untiring devo tion which made him the great teacher he was, as well as that unique and genial personality which made us all love him as we did. He developed and expanded the pleading and prac tice side of the work greatly with the added time, and gave to the court a dignity and an air of reality which made it what it became under his charge.
It is safe to say that in no court in the country were the proprieties and decorum of court procedure—so necessary for the orderly administration of justice—observed more fully than in the Practice Court of the University of Michigan. The court as developed here was later adopted, or partially adopted, in many other law schools, notably Columbia, Cornell, and Pennsylvania, and it was, per haps, the most distinctive addition to the usual Law School curriculum made in recent years. The best statement of the necessity and pos sibility of such a court is one by Professor Bogle himself in a discussion before the Section on Legal Education of the American Bar Association in 1902.
His Years in the Law School
Professor Bogle taught in the Law School for twenty-four years and was recognized as one of the great law teach ers in the country. "It is doubtful if any of the many who have taught in the School from its beginning was ever more admired and loved as a teacher than he was by those who passed before him year after year." Because of his great en dowment of rigor and strength he could not realize that these could break and he continued without rest or recreation and with unabated zeal until that break came. For the last ten years or so of his life, his health and strength were precarious. He died in St. Joseph's Sanitarium on June 17, 1921. He is survived by his wife, who was Miss Alice Burgard, of Osawatomie, Kansas, four daughters and two sons.