Biographical Sketches
ROBERT ROSS JAMISON
The subject of this sketch, was born in Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, on the 10th day of May, 1866. In 1869 he came westward with his parents and settled in Jackson county, Missouri. Here he attended the public schools until he was 14 years of age. He then entered Lincoln College at Greenwood, Missouri, where he pursued a course of study for several years, preparing himself for the study of his chosen profession. Shortly after leaving college, he entered the law office of the Hon. O. J. Houts, of Warrensburg, Missouri, where he remained for some time. Foreseeing, however, that a broad and comprehensive knowledge and understanding of the theory and principles of the law was necessary for a successful manipulation of the machinery of its practice, he resolved to take a professional course at the University of Michigan. This he did, graduating with distinguished honor in the law class of 1892. After employing a few months of well earned rest, Mr. Jamison located in Kansas City, in February, 1893, entering the office of the Hon. R. H. Field, with whom he has since been associated.
Marked ability is always sure of an early recognition, and although yet a young man Mr. Jamison is already enjoying the benefits of a lucrative and steadily increasing practice. He is especially able as a trial lawyer. Tested as a master of the points in his cause, in quick perception and close discrimination in examination of witnesses, and the gift of exposition to the court and jury of the law and facts involved, he is pre-eminent. In argument, he is given more to the ponderous, the logical and the convincing than to the ornate and the elaborate. His style is simple and direct, his vocabulary copious and Anglo-Saxon, his argument inductive, and thought clear; and back of this is the discrimination and taste of a trained literary mind.
While possessing a splendid education, Mr. Jamison is of the broad and generous mold, attaching less importance to the technicalities of exact scholarship than to the great system of education which makes man the study and the world the college. His positions and reasonings are always based not upon the rippling ideas of the surface but upon the strong current of principle underneath. This method makes the study of law an inspiration and pleasure; pursued otherwise, it is dry, precise, and preeminently unpoetic.
It has been said that the spirit of prophecy dwells no more with men; but if the past is a criterion by which we may judge the future, we may safely predict for Mr. Jamison a career which will realize the promise and expand the reputation already won.
This page was last updated August 2, 2006.