Strangers to Us All
Lawyers and Poetry

Spencer A. Gard

(1898-1991)
Kansas

Spencer Gard was a Kansas lawyer. He received his J.D. from the University of Kansas in 1922. He practiced law in Kansas City, Missouri for twenty years and then moved his family to Iola, Kansas where he was born. In the ensuing forty years he served as county attorney, in both houses of the Kansas Legislature, and for nineteen years as district judge. Gard became judge of the 37th Kansas Judicial District in 1950 and served until his retirement in 1969. He was a member of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws and chairperson of the special committee that drafted the Uniform Rules of Evidence in 1953. As a member of the Kansas Council, he served as as chairman of the commission that authored the 1963 Kansas Code of Civil Procedure.

We learned that Judge Gard was a poet by way of his poem, "On the Office Wall," that appeared in the American Bar Association Journal (vol. 60, p. 199, 1974).

Poetry

Spencer A. Gard, The Flowering Crab: Selected Poems ([Lawrence, Kansas?: s.n., 1976)

_____________, What the Wind Blows Up (Castle Valley, Utah: Featherweed Press, 1990)

Writings

Gard authored various books on the law of evidence and civil procedure, including: Jones on Evidence, Civil and Criminal (Rochester, New York: Lawyers Co-operative Pub. Co., 1972); The Law of Evidence, Civil and Criminal (San Francisco: Bancroft-Whitney Co., 1958); Florida Evidence (Rochester, New York: Lawyers Co-operative Pub. Co., 1967) (1980); Illinois Evidence Manual (Rochester, New York: Lawyers Co-operative Pub. Co., 1963); Missouri Evidence (Rochester, New York: Lawyers Co-operative Pub. Co., 1985); Kansas Code of Civil Procedure Annotated.