Peter Hitchcock - Judicial Service

Judicial Service

The legislature appointed Peter Hitchcock a judge of the Supreme Court of Ohio in 1819 for a seven-year term, and reappointed him to a second term in 1826. Prior to 1831, panels of the Supreme Court traveled over the State in circuit, panels simultaneously holding sessions in different counties of the state. After 1831, it became the practice for the Supreme Court of Ohio to sit en banc at the capital. Judge Peter Hitchcock generally traveled the circuit on horseback or his own Yankee wagon. He would reach a county seat by noon or later, and immediately went to the Clerk's office. All the chancery cases and demurrers, or other papers for the Court, would be in his room and usually settled by the time Court opened the next morning.

His method of preparing to hear a case was to determine the primary question in the case, review the law books, but develop his own line of reasoning. In court, he did not refuse to hear argument, but unless it was quite an important case, or he indicated a desire to hear argument, the members of the Bar were apt to submit directly to his examinations. It was rare that the court’s business was not completed in a day.

Partisan maneuvering kept Judge Hitchcock off the court in 1833. Instead he ran and was elected to another term in the Ohio Senate, again serving as speaker. Hitchcock was reappointed to another seven-year term on the court in 1835. In 1842, partisanship again took him off the court until 1845 when he was appointed to another seven-year term. He voluntarily retired in 1852 at the end of his fourth term. Of the twenty-eight years he served on the Supreme Court of Ohio, the last twenty-one of them were as Chief Justice.

Hitchock was a Presidential elector in 1844 for Clay/Frelinghuysen.

The honorary degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred on him by Marietta College in 1845 and by Western Reserve College in 1849.