But how are their decisions to be known?

	Hiram Sickels, the thirteenth official Reporter, was born in Albion, Orleans County, on June 24, 1827. Sickels attended Albion Academy and, at the age of 16, read law in the law office of Curtis & Stone in the same village. Admitted to the bar in 1848, he practiced in Medina for 13 years until the outbreak of the Civil War. Commissioned a First Lieutenant in the Seventeenth Volunteer Battery of the light artillery in 1862, Sickels served from Fort Fisher to Appomattox until June 1865, leaving as Captain for his valiant performance of service to his country. Returning to practice in Albion after his military duty, he moved in 1871 to Albany, where he spent the rest of his life. Until 1872, he edited opinions of the Attorneys General of the State of New York. Sickels then assumed the post of State Reporter in February 1872, a position he held until his death, publishing 101 volumes of the New York Reports, more than any other Reporter. While Reporter, he also served as referee for litigations and was on the faculty of Albany Law School, teaching evidence for 14 years. With the organization of the Civil Service, he served as the chairman of the State Board of Examiners from 1883 to 1888, as appointed by the Civil Service Commissioners. He married Caroline A. Fairman in 1852. Sickels died on July 4, 1895. (Photograph from Chadbourne, The Public Service of the State of New York)
	Edmund Smith was born on September 27, 1848, the eldest son of Supreme Court Justice James C. Smith, who is considered a founder of the Republican party. Smith attended Canandaigua Academy from 1860 to 1865 and was admitted to the bar in New York City in November 1871. In the spring of 1873, he was appointed assistant to Colonel Bliss, United States District Attorney, but resigned due to illness. He accepted a faculty position at Hobart College, Geneva, in September 1874. Smith worked in the New York Court of Appeals Clerk’s Office in 1892, and in 1895 he became State Reporter, publishing 16 volumes of the New York Reports by 1900, when he left the office to administer his father’s estate. His sister, Emily Smith Putnam, was in the first graduating class of Bryn Mawr College, and was later to become Dean of Barnard College. Smith married the former Elizabeth Hopkins Bradford on December 27, 1876. He died in Canandaigua, at the age of 67, on October 18, 1915. (Photograph courtesy of New York Red Book, Albany, N.Y.)
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