1835–1913 · Indiana Supreme Court justice and legal-treatise author
Byron K. Elliott was an Indianapolis lawyer who served as city attorney, sat on the Marion County criminal and superior courts, and was a justice of the Indiana Supreme Court from 1881 to 1893. After leaving the bench he practised with his son, William F. Elliott, and the two wrote a shelf of legal treatises that were used across the United States. He did not coin this saying. His 1911 treatise simply records it — and his own footnote hands the famous table-pounding line to an anonymous “modern commentator,” which is why the adage remains, as Quote Investigator puts it, anonymous.