“Perhaps the most important text book writer of the last third of the nineteenth century,” Pomeroy is one of the foremost contributors to American jurisprudence on topics ranging from equity to municipal law.

[2] There he “displayed a genuine scholarly bent that a cynic might feel was confirmed by the fact that in his nine years of practice in Rochester, his native town, he had little if any business.”[4] He married Ann Rebecca Carter, one of his former pupils, in 1855.

Pomeroy developed this system as using a “printed ‘syllabus’ or outline of topics, with lists of illustrative cases, and the first-hand study, of these cases and their free discussion in the class room.”[2] He believed that the “central principle of all true education, whether professional or general” is that the student “must be taught and accustomed to acquire [knowledge] for himself.”[2] United States Secretary of State Elihu Root, one of his pupils, described his teaching style as highly personal and centered on small class sizes: He also believed that law school should last three years and at least provide an elementary understanding of all of the basic doctrines of law, rather than an intimate knowledge of a smaller range of topics.

His expressed these views in his inaugural address, on taking the chair of municipal law in the University of California, in 1878: In 1871, he resigned from his position and returned to Rochester due to ill health.

[4] Before the first meeting of the faculty on August 8, 1878, the Board of the College created a Professorship of Municipal Law with a salary $300 per month, appointing Pomeroy to that position.

[4] They first directed him to draw up his “whole system” of legal education to present to the Board and asked him to lecture 10 hours a week.

[3] Those duties entailed serving almost two hundred students across three large classes, while making himself a master of the many peculiarities of California state law.

[2] This three-volume text, published between 1881 and 1883, greatly shaped the development of equity law in the United States.

[6] Another influential work he published at this time was a series of articles entitled, The True Method of Interpreting the Civil Code.

Pomeroy felt dismayed at how the code operated, deeming it full of “defects, imperfections, omissions, and .

[3] Between 1882 and 1884, Pomeroy served as counsel in the Railroad Tax Cases, in involved grave questions of constitutional law.

[2] He died at 56 years old at his home on the corner of Clay and Hyde Streets in San Francisco, after a brief illness of pneumonia on February 15, 1885.