Traveling the Beaten Trail: Charles Tait’s Charges to Federal Grand Juries, 1822–1825 by Paul M. Pruitt, Jr., David I. Durham, Sally E. Hadden (review)

The Occasional Publications of the Bounds Law Library states its desire to offer documents “that contribute to an understanding of the development of legal history, culture, or doctrine.” The three co-authors of the eighth and most recent title in the series, perhaps without realizing it, have done all three. While focusing on Charles Tait’s judicial career and extant grand jury charges, Paul M. Pruitt, Jr., David I. Durham, and Sally E. Hadden also offer interesting insights into the manner in which a single federal judge could impact the law as well as the legal and even intellectual culture of early Alabama.

Charles Tait was a former state legislator, superior court judge, and United States Senator from Georgia who joined with several other notable Georgians—particularly those with ties to the Broad River region, in looking westward to Alabama to advance or resurrect their political and economic ambitions. Although he unsuccessfully sought to become one of the new state’s first two senators, he ultimately was appointed by President James Monroe in 1820 as the first U.S. district court judge in Alabama. He would serve as a federal judge for six years before retiring to his plantation to conduct agricultural experiments and scientific excavations which saw him become “a leading expert on the Eocene shell” (50). He died in 1835.

Pruitt and Durham provide a biographical sketch of Tait’s life that, among other things, focuses on his qualifications for the federal judgeship. This is important because public land sales in the Old Southwest had created a haven for attorneys of every conceivable combination of experience, education, and ethics, as best described in Joseph Baldwin’s oft quoted Flush Times of Alabama and Mississippi (1854). What is too little recognized, however, is that both state and federal judges in the region were drawn from these ranks. As Pruitt and Durham point out, Alabama was truly fortunate to have as its first federal judge a man with prior judicial experience and an extensive (for the time) law library. During his six years of service on the federal bench, Tait combined his personality, knowledge, and experience to both shape the federal bar and tutor Alabama citizens.

With respect to the bar, Tait was clearly aware of the widely varying legal abilities of those who professed to be attorneys within his jurisdiction. Rather than deal with the behavior and mistakes of novices in his courtroom, Tait banned them. As Pruitt and Durham record, Tait “early on established the rule that he would admit to practice only persons who had been two or more years admitted to an appellate bar; and his was the sole power of admission to his court” (26).

Tait also took great pains to educate members of the grand jury in both their procedural responsibilities and in larger issues dealing with federal law and the constitutional system of the United States. As the authors correctly point out, federal judges during this era, particularly those in frontier areas like the Old Southwest, played a far greater role than any other national government actor in educating citizens about the ideals and structures of their government. Their “republican schoolmaster” role was magnified as grand jury charges were reprinted in local papers and separate pamphlets for all citizens to read. Indeed, public dissemination of these charges extended the influence of federal judges far beyond their courtrooms. As far as the impact of these charges is concerned, Salley Hadden notes that “exhortation via legal service could be as instructive as words delivered from the church pulpit” (59).

Hadden’s essay offers additional historical information on Tait, including the significant transportation problems he encountered in traveling across the state to fulfill his district court...