During law school, Pepper worked part-time for the prestigious firm Biddle and Ward. He was
admitted to the bar in 1889. He then taught law at his alma mater for more than two decades, as well as maintained a private practice. In his autobiography, dedicated to "
Andrew Hamilton and all other Philadelphia Lawyers Past and Present", Pepper acknowledged that public dissatisfaction with the bar had always existed, but thought it increasing throughout his lifetime. He thus devoted the penultimate chapter as "a treatise for lawyers only", cautioning them that the poor repute to which the some deserve "to be scolded, is one whose offense does not consist in representing a corporation or in being disloyal to his client, but in allowing fidelity to that client to dim or black out entirely his sense of public duty." He thought those so indifferent to public interest were few and could be readily identified, but specifically warned against the "far more subtle and more common vice of regarding the client as a suitable subject for exploitation" cautioning "[t]he instant that the attorney's interest becomes inconsistent with the client's the attorney's interest must be forgotten."
Academic Teaching at the Penn Law school for 21 years, Pepper began as a teaching fellow and soon became the first
Algernon Sydney Biddle Professor of Law, a position he held from 1893 until 1910, when he became a trustee of the university. In 1890–1891, he visited Harvard Law School in
Cambridge, Massachusetts and studied the case system of instruction being introduced by Dean
Christopher C. Langdell, and applied by
John Chipman Gray in Property,
James Bradley Thayer in Evidence and Constitutional Law,
James Barr Ames in Torts, Trusts and Pleading, and
Samuel Williston in Contracts. Pepper primarily taught about corporations, partnership and insurance. After World War I, Draper and
Elihu Root founded the
American Law Institute, with funding from the Carnegie Corporation and
George W. Wickersham as its first President. Pepper became a member of its governing council in 1930 and succeeded Wickersham as president from 1936 to 1947. He also served on the Federal Advisory Committee which drafted the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, with former Attorney General
William D. Mitchell as chairman
Charles L. Clark as reporter. He delivered the commencement address at the graduation ceremony at the University of Pittsburgh in 1921. For his academic pursuits, Pepper was elected to both the
American Philosophical Society and the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Author Pepper wrote over 40 articles in various legal publications. and, from 1892 to 1895, edited and published the
University of Pennsylvania Law Review (then the
American Law Register and Review), with his friend,
William Draper Lewis. His 1895 presentation to the Pennsylvania Bar Association about legal education prompted reforms. With Lewis, he edited the
Digest of Decisions and Encyclopedia of Pennsylvania Law, 1754–1898 (1898–1906). Pepper also authored
The Borderland of Federal and State Decisions,
Pleading at Common Law and Under the Codes ,
Digest of the Laws of Pennsylvania 1700 - 1901, and
Digest of Decisions and Encyclopaedia of Pennsylvania.
Private practice Pepper served as president of the
Pennsylvania Bar Association early in his career, and as chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association late in his career, from 1930 to 1932. As he retired, his law firm in 1954 merged with Evans, Bayard & Frick (whose leading partner by that time was Francis M. Sheetz) to form Pepper, Bodine, Frick, Scheetz & Hamilton, which eventually became
Pepper Hamilton; the 35 member firm moved to the building of its largest client,
The Fidelity Bank. The earliest case he recounted in his autobiography concerned a bequest to the City of Philadelphia by
Benjamin Franklin in 1790, which was to fund interest-bearing loans to deserving artisans. Newly minted lawyer Pepper lost the case brought on behalf of Franklin's heirs in 1890, but learned "in any human system for the administration of justice there must be a reserved judicial right to refuse in exceptional cases to stretch beyond the breaking point a legal principle that is sound enough for everyday use." Five decades later, the Orphans Court (which was found to lack jurisdiction in the original case) appointed him Master to determine question under Franklin's will and thus facilitate the administration of the trust which as a youthful advocate he had tried to set aside. Pepper also learned from his days trying many cases for the Union Traction Company (Philadelphia's streetcar purveyor) that perjury is plentiful but Philadelphia's jurists, while disposed to favor plaintiffs, were nonetheless quick to detect fraud and prompt to condemn it. He also found jurors sympathetic to anyone who has acted under provocation, and apt to resent the conduct of the provocateur, and proudly recounted a cross-examination he had made before Judge
Mayer Sulzberger. Pepper recounted his first brush with politics occurred as Republican boss
Matthew Quay's term as Senator expired before Pennsylvania's legislature could reappoint him, due to a revolt led by State Senator William Flinn, who blocked the reappointment despite daily ballots from January until adjournment in April. Governor Stone then gave Quay a temporary appointment, which led to protests in the Senate. After the argument, a senator had mistaken Pepper for Pennsylvania's Attorney General, Elkins, although in fact Pepper had written the opposing brief. The Senate refused to recognize Quay's appointment, which eventually reduced his power, although the case led to a friendship between Pepper and Elkins (who had hoped to succeed Stone as Governor, but became a justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania instead). In the early 1900s, a federal judge in Massachusetts appointed Pepper
receiver for the Bay State Gas Company, a
bankrupt Massachusetts utility which had been promoted by former Philadelphian
J. Edward Addicks, who had also caused controversy (and the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution by trying to buy the Senate seat from Delaware). Pepper then sued a number of nationally known businessmen, including
William Rockefeller,
Henry Rogers, and
Thomas Lawson, for enriching themselves at the expense of the utility, and secured several recoveries, as well as a successful receivership of the utility. Pepper represented
Gifford Pinchot in connection with the
Pinchot–Ballinger controversy, which began his political career on the national scene, as discussed below. He was counsel to the National and American League baseball clubs, defeating the application of the Sherman Antitrust Act to their activities in Chicago in 1915 before judge
Kenesaw Mountain Landis in preliminary injunction case. However, it was revived four years later after the
Black Sox Scandal and his clients received an unfavorable jury verdict, which was reversed by the Supreme Court in
Federal Baseball Club v. National League (1922) after lawyer Pepper and Judge Landis (who by then became baseball Commissioner) revised the leagues' organizational structure, Pepper writing the caption for the new series of agreements, "Play Fair. Play Hard. Play for the Team." While in the Senate, Pepper maintained a reduced private practice. The cases of which he was most proud of during that time were
Frick v. Pennsylvania, an inheritance tax case, and
Myers v. United States, which he argued as amicus curiae at the invitation of the Supreme court, concerning President Wilson's removal of a postmaster. Although the Court decided that the legislative act requiring Senatorial consent to such removal was unconstitutional, it thanked him for his service and he believed the decision vindicated President Andrew Johnson's position with respect to the Tenure of Office Act, and that the powerful dissent by Justices Holmes, McReynolds and Brandeis might eventually receive favorable future reconsideration. Pepper also took pride in his handling of the George Otis Smith case (concerning the Federal Power Commission), where Pepper vindicated Presidential rights against the Senate, having refused a senatorial delegation's offer to represent them but accepting that of Attorney General Mitchell. He participated in the reorganization of Bankers Trust Co., the first Philadelphia bank to fail in the Great Depression. Later, Pepper condemned the mania for arbitration, which he encountered in a controversy between American Telephone and Telegraph and Warner Brothers, warning that the high per diem compensation demanded by arbitrators would not ensure that they would dispose of the controversy fairly and in short order, but instead would more likely extend matters as each of the two original arbiters selected by the parties will act as unofficial advocate for the side appointing him. He concluded his advice for fellow attorneys by quoting Justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., "I like your rapture over the law, I only fear that it may be dimmed as you get into the actualities (in the sense of the hard side) of life. But if, as I hope, and as what you write indicates, you bear the fire in your belly, it will survive and transfigure the hard facts." ==Lay church leader==