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At the Lectern

Sober as a judge?

August 23, 2025

While researching something completely unrelated, I came across this anecdote about Justice Thomas McFarland, who served on the Supreme Court from 1887 to 1908:

The anecdote concerns his pleasant custom of pausing daily at his favorite bar on the way home. Once a newspaper gossip columnist commented that it was not an edifying spectacle to see Justice McFarland of the supreme court drinking cocktails day after day in such-and-such a saloon. McFarland was indignant, and told his associates he proposed to bring action for libel. One of them ventured to ask him in what respect the item was false. “ ‘Cocktails!’ ”  the old justice snorted, “He said ‘cocktails’. Why, I haven’t had a mixed drink in thirty years.”

Sloss, M. C. Sloss and the California Supreme Court (1958) 46 Cal. L. Rev. 715, 719, fn. 6.

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