Charles Doe was much heralded in his own time and his legend was burnished by national legal scholars in the years after his death. Professor John Henry Wigmore of Wigmore on Evidence fame said that Doe was "one of the greatest American Judges." Wigmore meant it, dedicating his Treatise on Evidence to Doe in the decade after Doe’s death. By comparison, the pocket edition was dedicated to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., a fact Justice Holmes did not let Wigmore forget. Dean Roscoe Pound of Harvard said that Doe was one of "the ten judges who must be ranked first in American judicial history."

Doe was born in Derry, New Hampshire in 1830. After a youth of farm work, he attended preparatory schools, then Harvard. Doe later finished his studies at Dartmouth. At Dartmouth, Doe was a self-proclaimed mediocre student, though he did make Phi Beta Kappa. His conversion to a more industrious approach to his life’s work supposedly took place after Doe and some of his classmates surreptitiously touched Daniel Webster’s boots while he was giving a speech. Doe spent one term at Harvard Law School, and then returned to Dover to apprentice with a lawyer.

As a young man, Doe was involved with politics and served as an assistant senate clerk and then county solicitor. At the young age of twenty-nine, Doe was appointed to the New Hampshire Supreme Court. Doe would sit on the court until his death at age 65 with only a two year break when the political winds did not favor him. Doe served twenty of his years on the court as Chief Justice.

Doe is remarkable not merely for his long tenure as a judge, but for his accomplishments as a reformer, a judicial independent, and his industrious nature. Contemporaries said that Doe was blessed with an unrivaled clarity and rapidity of thought and a knack for common sense. He tore through the jungle of legal forms and archaic procedure and vigorously opposed any kind of code pleading, preferring the more organic and litigant-friendly atmosphere of malleable notice pleadings, a legacy that persists in the Granite State to this day – despite efforts to adopt rules of civil procedure and do away with our ancient system of writs. Doe brought reform to rules of evidence, tort law, and pleadings. He admitted women to the bar and vigorously attacked railroads and insurance companies when they overreached to the detriment of the “Little Guy.”

No brief sketch of Doe is complete without a passing mention of Doe’s eccentricities that endeared him to the New Hampshire and Boston public. One topic of discussion was Doe’s sartorial choices. As a young man he is said to have favored "elegant attire which amounted almost to frippery." Once he became a judge he switched to more utilitarian clothing such as donning a horse blanket buckled at the shoulders, and a blue hat with earflaps in the winter. He even designed his own oddly shaped, low-heeled shoes. Doe’s most notorious fashion choice came when he served as a pallbearer for Chief Justice Henry Bellows. Doe donned ratty slippers, a threadbare outfit, and blue and white mittens. Legend has it that Doe was denied entrance to the Parker House in Boston, having been mistaken for a tramp. It took a Harvard professor’s intervention to gain him access to the favorite hotel of the transcendentalists and other thinkers and society leaders of the Victorian era. Doe’s biographer, Professor John Phillip Reid, writes that Doe chose to live like a "farmer or a millhand," despite inherited wealth.

Frank Rowe Kenison

Frank Kenison was born in Conway, New Hampshire in 1907. His father was a practicing attorney and Clerk of Court for Carroll County. Throughout his years at Brewster Academy, Dartmouth College, and Boston University School of Law, Frank Kenison maintained a strong desire to practice law. He later returned to Carroll County to practice and eventually served as county attorney. In 1937, he came to Concord as the state’s sole Assistant Attorney General (in a two man office) and in 1940 became the Attorney General. Frank Kenison served as Attorney General until his appointment to the Supreme Court in 1946. Six years later, he became chief justice until his retirement in 1977.

During his tenure as Chief Justice he wrote hundreds of opinions that helped to ensure that the law in New Hampshire remained a vital force, sensitive to the changing needs of the people of the State, unshackled by outmoded precedent. He was a progressive in the area of tort law and his opinions are still cited with frequency in law school classes on conflicts of law and jurisdiction.

Under Chief Justice Kenison, opinions were short and incisive, not rambling discourses on the law in question. A strong preference for simplicity and directness, over obfuscation and overly narrow reasoning, also characterized his view of the current American tendency to constantly pass laws to “solve” problems.

The many institutional changes accomplished under his administration included reorganization of the lower courts, provision for a retirement plan for all full-time judges, a complete revision of the criminal code, creation of a sentence review division in the superior court, and establishment of a Court Accreditation Commission. The court also established a Committee on Judicial Conduct to hear complaints from citizens and lawyers arising out of alleged transgressions of the Code of Judicial Conduct.

Frank Kenison also devoted time to legal and judicial education beyond the confines of his native State. His active participation as a member and Chairman of the Chief Justices of the Fifty States, as a Director of the American Judicature Society, and as a participant in the American Law Institute further highlight his career.

The job of chief justice requires many skills, not the least of which are demonstrated by the manner in which Chief Justice Kenison presided over the case conference. That job calls for a sense of pace and an ability to curtail drifting discussions. Unlimited patience and genuine courtesy are essential. Frank Kenison’s operating premise was to prevent deep-seated philosophical disagreements from erupting into personal animosities.²⁶

Utilizing his keen ability to coordinate and reconcile five separate egos, Chief Justice Kenison successfully effectuated his own description of the court: “The Supreme Court is more than its five members; it is an institution, and it must project a direction and a course.”

In 1975, Frank Kenison addressed the New Hampshire legislature with words that are an enduring challenge to all lawyers and judges in the decades ahead:

The Supreme Court and the Judiciary of this State will continue to maintain and guard its house of justice for the humble as well as the powerful, for the poor as well as the rich, for the minority as well as the majority and for the unpopular as well as the popular.