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|  | | Discordant Sound
Essays on the war and other horrible things.
| |  | | The Conservative In Spite of Himself
Political philosophy, law, eye-poking.
| |  | | What Measure Ye Mete: The Life and Times of Judge Halsted Ritter
[CORRECTION: On p. 85, second full paragraph, the words in [brackets] should be deleted: "Except for Minton, all of the Senators who voted to acquit Ritter on [one of] the first six articles also voted to acquit him on the seventh article."]
When Maximilian Longley published his last book, *Discordant Sound* (writing as Eric Longley), the literary magazine *Wild Violet* praised the "rigorous research" which he brought to a wide variety of subjects. In *What Measure Ye Mete,* Longley applies the same kind of rigorous research to the life of Halsted Ritter, a lawyer and Prohibition activist who served as a federal judge from 1929 until his impeachment and conviction in 1936.
Ritter was the brother of historian Mary Ritter Beard, as well as being a history-maker in his own right. As a reformist lawyer in Colorado, he campaigned for Prohibition. When he moved to Florida in his later years, he got appointed as a federal trial judge. During the New Deal, when conservative trial judges like him had become unpopular, Ritter found himself on trial in Congress on charges of misconduct in office.
Halsted Ritter seems to meet the stereotype of a hypocritical moralist who is tripped up by the same kind of high standards he tried to enforce on others. Ritter was an activist in the Anti-Saloon League, the organization that helped impose Prohibition on the United States. He was appointed to a federal judgeship in Florida during Prohibition, partly because of his record of support for that policy. He was later impeached and removed from office because of alleged improprieties committed while on the bench.
The story is more complicated than that. While Ritter’s conduct as a judge had |
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