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San Diego's Judges of the Plains (9 pages)
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Journal of San Diego History
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_ http://sandiegohistory.org/journal/69fall/judges. htm
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THE JOURNAL OF
ASTOR Ee
The Journal of San Diego History
Fall 1969, Volume 15, Number 4
Contents of This Issue
San Diego's Judges of the Plains
By Leland Stanford
Images from the article
What's a "vented cowhide?"
One hundred years ago (in 1869) José Antonio Serrano, or Robert
Kelly, or any one of the 16 Judges of the Plains in San Diego County
at that time, could have described it without getting off his horse to
consult a dictionary.
Few people today could explain such a term. A vented cowhide
sounds as though it were shot full of holes; or, if improperly
preserved, it might be kept in a drafty place to minimize obnoxious
odors. It might have been almost anything except what it actually was,
namely, a hide with its brand marks legally cancelled before being
offered for sale.
The inspection of thousands of hides to insure legal venting was one
of hundreds of now almost forgotten duties of the men who for
decades constituted the county's most important branch of the statesanctioned judiciary the Judges of the Plains.
On April 25, 1851, within months after the beginning of
statehood, the California legislature enacted "An Act
concerning Judges of the Plains (Jueces del Campo) and
defining their duties." These wholly American officers
were the inheritors of the judicial power of a MexicanSpanish dynasty whose ancestral roots began in historical
loam as ancient and honorable as the humus that nurtured
the earliest common law.
Although the compulsory fence laws in California in the later 19th
6/3/2005