Special Sessions
SPECIAL OPENING SESSION: RE-DEDICATION OF THE PORTRAIT OF THE HONORABLE NATHANIEL BACON
October 6, 1998
CHIEF JUSTICE MALLETT: Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the first day of the October 1998 session. We are grateful that all of you have come to join us yet again. It is our tradition to open our term in this room, in what is the old Supreme Court facility, to make familiar to all of the people of the State of Michigan with the work that we do by examining regularly the history that this Court is responsible for. Our partner in that effort is the Michigan Supreme Court Historical Society, whose president is Mr. Wallace Riley, who has presided at these events any number of times. We are always grateful for his participation and effort on our behalf to make clear what the Court has done and to celebrate with us the achievements of the Court. At this time, it gives me great pleasure to introduce the president of the Michigan State Supreme Court Historical Society, Mr. Wallace Riley.
MR. RILEY: Thank you, Your Honor. Mr. Chief Justice and justices of the Supreme Court assembled here today for the opening of the 1998-99 Court term, members of the bar in attendance, and ladies and gentlemen, as the Chief pointed out, this is now the fourth consecutive year that you have held the opening of Court in these old Supreme Court chambers. As you know, the last regular session of this Court was held in these chambers on March 3, 1970, with Chief Justice THOMAS E. BRENNAN presiding. Then on October 10, 1995, we began what is becoming a tradition of hearing the first oral argument of the term in these chambers. This Court knows from past reports that we have been actively involved among our many activities of commissioning and presenting new portraits of justices, as well as cataloging and photographing all the existing portraits of former justices. We have set forth with the Court's blessing the criteria for the custody and care and location of these important items of state property. In earlier times before such a standard of care and concern existed, some portraits or their framings were seriously damaged. We have undertaken to restore these treasured portraits with the professional assistance of Mr. Ken Katz and his organization, Conservation and Museum Services. This portrait and the frame restoration effort has gone on now for over a year, so that today we are able to return to the Court the restored portrait of your sixteenth justice, the Honorable NATHANIEL BACON, who served from 1855 to 1857. So it seems only fitting that you receive this portrait and that as you receive it you should become reacquainted with some of the history of your colleague of an earlier time, who served on your Court, but served even before these chambers were built. So with the Court's permission for that introduction, I would call now upon former Chief Justice THOMAS E. BRENNAN to tell you about Justice NATHANIEL BACON.
JUSTICE
BRENNAN: Mr. Chief Justice, justices, may it please
the Court. On June 4, 1901, Mr. Frederick Bacon
of St. Louis, Missouri, presented to the Michigan
Supreme Court a portrait of his father, NATHANIEL
BACON, who was one of the circuit judges who served
on the original Supreme Court of Michigan. Then-Chief
Justice ROBERT MONTGOMERY accepted the painting
on behalf of the Court, and he ordered it hung in
this very courtroom. How long it remained on exhibit
here no one really knows. But sometime during the
intervening ninety-seven years the portrait was
taken down and relegated to dusty storage. Ultimately
it became the victim, if not of deliberate vandalism,
at least of gross indifference to its care and preservation.
In 1996, the Executive Director of the Michigan
Supreme Court Historical Society, Ellen Campbell,
came upon the damaged portrait during an inventory
of the Court's artwork. The canvass was literally
shredded in a dozen pieces. I have a picture of
it here, if the Court please, and you can see readily
from the markings on it how badly it was ripped
up. Through the loving and meticulous restoration
of Mr. Katz, the portrait has been renewed, and
the Society is pleased to return this valuable piece
of art to its rightful place of honor.
This is an occasion, if it may please the Court
to indulge me, when men and women of sensibility
to historic perspective will find themselves contemplating
the threads of human existence that connect this
sitting Court to the man's whose likeness has been
renewed and returned. NATHANIEL BACON was a New
Yorker of English puritan descent. His son described
him as kind and charitable, strong, earnest, industrious
and upright, but also somewhat austere. A man of
simple taste, few pleasures, and a sense of duty
that kept him on the straight and narrow path. Volume
124 of the Michigan Reports, which contains the
record of the BACON portrait presentation, was published
more than thirty years after his death. Still it
holds a number of interesting tidbits for us to
think about as we connect in this brief moment with
our collective past. Scougale v Sweet, page 311
of that volume, for example, reminds us of a day
when the playing of baseball on Sunday was a misdemeanor,
punishable by a fine of $10. Of a day when the State
of Georgia was able to prohibit the movement of
freight trains on Sunday, even those engaged in
interstate commerce. Indeed, of a day when Chief
Justice KENT was quoted with approval in defense
of laws against public blasphemy, saying we stand
equally in need now as formerly of all that moral
discipline and of those principles of virtue that
help bind society together. Both Scougale and the
later case of Eikhoff v Gilbert, at page 353, recall
a time when public officials were still able to
bring libel actions against those whose false publications
defamed their good names and reputation, and scurrilous
negative campaign leaflets could lead to their authors
being hauled to the bar of justice. And then there
was Renaud v Bay City, at page 29, a suit for personal
injuries resulting in a miscarriage, in which the
Court held that the plaintiff, a married woman,
could not be asked if she had sexual intercourse
with her husband after the accident. Such testimony,
the Court said, would be inadmissible as to public
policy. Browsing through these and other cases through
the musty buckram bound reports in my office yesterday
afternoon, I could not help but ruminate about the
flow of human history that the Twentieth Century
has witnessed. It is as though this portrait of
BACON had been like that of the fictional Dorian
Gray, its visage twisted and corrupted with the
passing decades as our state and nation drifted
farther and farther from those puritan notions of
propriety that Judge BACON and his contemporaries
so cherished. To be sure no one today would suggest
that a Sunday afternoon Tiger baseball game is an
unlawful assembly. Of course the constitutional
question may well be moot since the statutory minimum
of thirty riotous persons might be hard to find
at Tiger Stadium considering their record. But there
was a simplicity and an innocence in the hearts
and the words of people a century ago that is etched
in painful contrast to the ugliness and amorality
of public life in America today. And the contemplation
of it makes us yearn for a better time when decency
and civility and integrity may be restored to our
public institutions and to our social discourse.
So on behalf of the Michigan Supreme Court Historical
Society and the men and women whose generosity has
made this day possible, I tender this rehabilitated
portrait of NATHANIEL BACON in the hope that its
return here in pristine condition might in some
way symbolize our own capacity to be renewed and
inspire us in a common resolve to do whatever we
can do to restore public respect for the dignity
of public servants. Mr. Katz, would you be kind
enough to unveil the restored portrait of Justice
NATHANIEL BACON.
MR. RILEY: Things old become new.
CHIEF JUSTICE MALLETT: Thank you Mr. Riley. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you have seen why these events on my Court schedule are very important. Why the members of the Michigan Supreme Court look forward to this day as not just the opportunity to see friends that we have not seen in awhile, but in fact to be part of an historical occasion. Having today the return of a portrait of a member of our collegial body, and yet again an opportunity to acknowledge the extraordinary work of our own sister here, PATRICIA J. BOYLE. We have the opportunity to recognize the presence of Chief Justice THOMAS BRENNAN, former Michigan Supreme Court Justice JOHN FITZGERALD. To share this opportunity and this day with the Executive Director of the State Bar, Larkin Chenault, and our new president, Tom Lenga. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the new president and leader of the lawyers in our state. We also want to recognize one of the litigants, one of the persons who has an extraordinary interest in the outcome of the case that will be presented here this morning, mayor of our host city, David Hollister. I want to also pay recognition to the Executive Director of the Michigan Supreme Court Historical Society, Ellen Campbell. She really does manage an extraordinary operation, and we are grateful for her efforts on our behalf.