 Despite the accusations of nepotism that greeted his appointment on January 3 , 1903 , Sifton fast became a well @-@ respected judge . He served as chief justice of the Northwest Territories until September 16 , 1907 , when the Supreme Court of Alberta was established , whereupon he headed this new court , sitting in Calgary as the first Chief Justice of Alberta . He was notoriously difficult for barristers to read : he generally heard arguments <unk> smoking a cigar , and it was as a judge that he first acquired his long @-@ time nickname of the Sphinx for his inscrutability . In one trial , he sat apparently vigorously taking notes during both sides ' lengthy closing arguments and , once they concluded , immediately delivered his judgment . The bewildered lawyers wondered what he had been writing down , since he had obviously made up his mind before closing arguments ; once Sifton had left the courtroom , they found their answer in the form of page after page covered with the judge 's signature . He rarely recorded his ratio decidendi but , despite this , few of his decisions were overturned on appeal . It has also been argued that his fellow judges had difficulty ruling on appeals from his decisions specifically because he rarely provided reasons . Much of his work was in criminal law , dealing especially with theft of livestock ( in which cases he generally delivered a sentence of three years hard labour , severe by the standards of the day ) . By the end of his judicial career , he had convicted as many Americans as Canadians . His rulings were generally concerned with practicalities rather than legal theory , based more on social morality than legal precedent , and he did not establish any important precedents . 
