Conduct "Unbecoming"

[Fred Shapiro]

On Fri, 22 Nov 2002, Kathleen E. Miller wrote:

> Could someone, pretty please with sugar on top, do a Westlaw search for me
> on that for legal/military first use?

Hayward v. Bath

SUPREME COURT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

40 N.H. 100; 1860 N.H. LEXIS 124


January, 1860

OPINION: ...  [*105]   [**7] sound law, exactly and literally as it is
printed, the evidence fell entirely short of bringing the commissioners
for Grafton county, or either of them, within its condemnation, and
utterly failed to prove the petitioners  [**8]  guilty of the
improprieties charged against them. As this discussion and analysis of the
evidence could not be of general interest, they are omitted. The opinion
concluded as follows:]

We have thus adverted to all the exceptions charging the commissioners
with corruption, partiality and improper conduct, and to all the
substantial portions of the evidence by which those charges are attempted
to be sustained, and the result, at which we have most unhesitatingly
arrived, is, that the charges are entirely unsustained. So far as we can
discover, the evidence discloses nothing to prove that either of the
commissioners acted corruptly, under any improper bias or prejudice, or
was in any way guilty of conduct unbecoming his official position. On the
contrary, the very full and satisfactory statement of Mr. Parker, the
chairman of the board, in his deposition, of the way and manner in which
the whole case was considered by them after the close of the hearing, and
of the very deliberate and careful examination they gave to it for nearly
twenty-four hours, almost demonstrates that there never could have been
the slightest foundation in truth for the numerous charges and assumptions
involved  [**9]  in the various exceptions taken to the conduct and
motives  [*106]  of the commissioners. Indeed, the testimony offered by
the town shows most clearly the honesty and purity of purpose of Mr.
Culver, whose conduct is most strongly assailed, and that he could have
been actuated only by his conviction of what the public accommodation
demanded; for it ...


Fred Shapiro


































>
> And did anyone notice a few weeks back the furor between Mitt Romney and
> Shannon O'Brien over the supposed "misogynistic" "gender specific" "he
> wouldn't have said it I were a MAN" use of the word "unbecoming?"
>
> Is it?
>
> Katy
>
>
> Kathleen E. Miller
> Research Assistant to William Safire
> The New York Times
>

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