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The seventeenth official Reporter of New York was born in Saugerties in 1847. Fiero graduated from Union College in 1867, studied law in the Delhi office of Supreme Court Justice William Murray, and was admitted to the bar in 1869. By 1891 he was in private practice with Amasa J. Parker in the Albany area and had started teaching Common Law and Code Practice and Pleading at Albany Law School. From 1895 to 1924, he served as the law school’s sixth Dean, the longest term in the school’s history. During this time period, the school adopted a two-year program of study. In the forefront on the issue of legal ethics, Dean Fiero and two of the law school’s trustees, Thomas H. Hubbard and Judge Alton B. Parker, who was Chief Judge from 1898 to 1904 before resigning to run for President, prepared the code of ethics adopted by the New York State Bar Association. Additionally, Fiero is credited with implementing the formation of the State Board of Law Examiners, creating a uniform system for the examination of applicants to the bar. In 1909, while at Albany Law School, Dean Fiero was appointed State Reporter, publishing 63 volumes of the New York Reports by his death in 1931. Active in various bar associations, he was president of the New York State Bar Association in 1893 and 1894, and also served as vicepresident
of the American Bar Association. Dean Fiero was the author of numerous books, including a treatise on special proceedings and special actions and the Principles of the Law of Torts (1900). He was married to the former Jeanette S. McCall, and they had three children. Dean Fiero died in Albany on April 13, 1931.
(Photograph courtesy of Albany Law School) |
The eighteenth official Reporter of New York, born in 1872, attended Albany High School. As a high school sophomore in 1888, Rezzemini began the study of law in the office of Hiram E. Sickels, then the State Reporter, commencing what was to be a lifelong relationship with the Reporter’s office, spanning over 50 years and the tenure of five Reporters: Hiram E. Sickels, Edmund H. Smith, Edwin A. Bedell, Alvah S. Newcomb, and J. Newton Fiero. After a clerkship with Fiero, he was admitted to the bar in 1893. Serving as State Reporter for his last 11 years with the Reporter’s office, Rezzemini published 36 volumes in the first series: 34 New York Reports volumes, one Appellate Division Reports volume, and one Miscellaneous Reports volume. He left the office for a period of nine months to serve in the Spanish-American War, and was stationed in Honolulu. Active in the community, his memberships included the Shriners and the St. Andrew’s Society. He was married to Joan Montignani, and they had two children. Rezzemini died in 1947 at the age of 75. | |
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