But how are their decisions to be known?

Esek Cowen was born in Rhode Island on February 24, 1787. His family moved to Greenfield, Saratoga County, in 1790 and later to Hartford, Washington County. During his early years he worked on his family's farm, attending a neighborhood school for only six months. Self-taught, he mastered classical and English literature, even learning Latin and Greek. He became a teacher at the age of 15 to support his legal studies, which began at age 16. He was admitted to the bar in 1810. In 1812 he moved to Saratoga Springs, where he practiced and was active in the community, serving on local and regional school committees and becoming a Justice of the Peace in 1815. Cowen was Reporter of the Supreme Court and Court of Errors from 1823 to 1828, publishing nine volumes of the Reports. Appointed Judge of the 4th Circuit by Governor Nathaniel Pitcher in 1828, he was elevated to the State Supreme Court by Governor William Marcy around 1835, serving there until his death. Judge Cowen published a Treatise on the Civil Jurisdiction of Justices of the Peace in New York, in 1821, and later published, with Nicholas Hill, Cowen and Hill’s Notes on Phillips’ Evidence (1839). He was cofounder of one of the first temperance organizations in the United States, established in Northumberland in 1812. Also, he was instrumental in the construction of Saratoga Springs Bethesda Episcopal Chapel in 1832. He was married to Martha Berry Rogers and they had three children. Judge Cowen died in Albany on February 11, 1844. (Portrait courtesy of the Court of Appeals Collection)
Wendell, born in Albany on January 2, 1785, of Dutch ancestry, was educated in Albany and Cambridge, New York. He studied law in his brother Gerritt’s law office prior to admission to the bar. While in Cambridge, he served as Judge of Washington County in 1821 and 1823. In 1828, Judge Wendell became the fourth official Reporter of New York, publishing 26 volumes of the Reports by 1841. In addition to publishing the New York Reports, he published a digest of Supreme Court cases (1836) and edited editions of Starkie’s Law of Slander (1843) and Blackstone’s Commentaries (1847). An active member of the community, Wendell was one of the incorporators of the Washington Library; a founding member of the Cambridge Washington Academy, serving on the board of trustees as secretary from 1815 to 1825 and treasurer from 1815 to 1821; and secretary of the Washington Bible Society in the State of New York from its inception in Washington County in 1813. He and his wife Susan Carter had eight children. Judge Wendell died in Hartford, Connecticut, on December 19, 1861.
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