Stephen Johnson Field

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Stephen Johnson Field
Stephen Johnson Field, photo half length seated, 1875.jpg
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
In office
May 20, 1863 – December 1, 1897
Nominated byAbraham Lincoln
Preceded bySeat established
Succeeded byJoseph McKenna
5th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of California
In office
September 12, 1859 – May 20, 1863
Nominated byJohn B. Weller
Preceded byDavid S. Terry
Succeeded byWarner Cope
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California
In office
October 13, 1857 – September 12, 1859
Nominated byJ. Neely Johnson
Preceded byHugh Murray
Succeeded byEdwin B. Crocker
Member of the California State Assembly
from the 14th district
In office
1851–1852
Preceded byConstituency established
Succeeded byA. G. Caldwell
Personal details
Born(1816-11-04)November 4, 1816
Haddam, Connecticut, U.S.
DiedApril 9, 1899(1899-04-09) (aged 82)
Washington, D.C., U.S.
Political partyDemocratic
Spouse(s)
Sue Virginia Swearingen
​
​
(m. 1859)​
EducationWilliams College (BA)
Signature

Stephen Johnson Field (November 4, 1816 – April 9, 1899) was an American jurist. He was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from May 20, 1863, to December 1, 1897, the second longest tenure of any justice. Prior to this appointment, he was the fifth Chief Justice of California.

Early life and education[]

Born in Haddam, Connecticut, he was the sixth of the nine children of David Dudley Field I, a Congregationalist minister, and his wife Submit Dickinson, a teacher. His family produced three other children of major prominence in 19th century America: David Dudley Field II the prominent attorney, Cyrus Field the millionaire investor and creator of the Atlantic Cable, and Rev. Henry Martyn Field a prominent clergyman and travel writer. He grew up in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and went to Turkey at thirteen with his sister Emilia and her missionary husband, Rev. Josiah Brewer. He received a B.A. from Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, in 1837. While attending Williams College he was one of the original Founders of Delta Upsilon fraternity. After reading law in Albany with Harmanus Bleecker and New York City with his brother David, Stephen was admitted to the bar. He practiced law with David until 1848, when he went to California during the Gold Rush.[1]

Field was an uncle of future Associate Justice David Josiah Brewer. Other notable relatives include Paul Stephen Field and legal scholar Anne Field.

Career in California politics and law[]

In California, Field's legal practice boomed and he was elected alcalde, a form of mayor and justice of the peace under the old Mexican rule of law, of Marysville (curiously, he was elected Alcalde just three days after his arrival in Marysville).[2] Because the Gold Rush city could not afford a jail, and it cost too much to transport prisoners to San Francisco, Field implemented[clarification needed] the whipping post, believing that without such a brutal implement many in the rough and tumble city would be hanged for minor crimes. The voters sent him to the California State Assembly in 1850 to represent Yuba County, but he lost a race the next year for the State Senate. His successful legal practice led to his election to the California Supreme Court in 1857, serving six years.[3]

Field was difficult and vengeful when others disagreed with him, and he easily made enemies. An opponent of his wrote that Field's life would be "found to be one series of little-mindedness, meanlinesses, of braggadocio, pusillanimity, and contemptible vanity."[4]

While serving on the California Supreme Court, Field had a special coat made with pockets large enough to hold two pistols so that he could fire the weapons inside the pockets.[5] In 1858 he was challenged to a duel by a fellow Judge (William T. Barbour) but at the dueling ground, neither man fired his gun.[6]

In 1859 Field replaced the former chief justice of the California Supreme Court, David S. Terry, because Judge Terry killed a United States Senator from California (David Colbreth Broderick) in a duel and left the state.[7] Field and Terry's paths crossed again 30 years later when Field, acting in his capacity as a circuit judge of the 9th Federal Circuit Court, ruled against Terry in a convoluted divorce case (and had him sent to jail for contempt of court as well). Seeking revenge, Terry attempted to kill Field in 1889 near Stockton, California, but was instead shot dead by Justice Field's bodyguard, U.S. Marshal David B. Neagle. Ironically, legal issues arising from the killing of Mr. Terry came before the Supreme Court in the 1890 habeas corpus case of In re Neagle.[8] To no one's surprise, the Supreme Court ruled the Attorney General of the United States had authority to appoint U.S. Marshals as bodyguards to Supreme Court Justices and Marshal Neagle had acted within the scope of his authority in shooting former Judge Terry.

U.S. Supreme Court justice[]

Stephen Johnson Field

On March 6, 1863, Abraham Lincoln appointed Field to the newly created tenth Supreme Court seat,[a] to achieve both regional balance (he was a Westerner) and political balance (he was a Democrat, albeit a Unionist one). The appointment would also give the court someone familiar with real estate and mining issues. Field was confirmed by the United States Senate on March 10, 1863, and received his commission the same day. He was sworn in May 20, 1863.

Justice Field's aspirations to become Chief Justice went unfulfilled, as he had made many enemies both political and personal.[9] During his circuit court rounds in 1889, he was assaulted at age 73 in a train station in Lathrop, California (by a former Chief Justice of California who was shot dead by Field's bodyguard, U.S. Marshal Neagle), which led to the 1890 U.S. Supreme Court decision In re Neagle in which Field abstained.[10]

Field insisted on breaking John Marshall's record of thirty-four years on the court, even though he was not able to handle the workload. His colleagues asked him to resign due to his being intermittently senile[11] but he refused, staying on until 1897. Field would become the last veteran of both the Taney Court and the Chase Court to remain on the bench. He would remain the longest serving member of the Court until his record was surpassed by Associate Justice William O. Douglas, who served from 1939 to 1975. He lived only two years more, dying in Washington, D.C., and was buried there in the Rock Creek Cemetery.[12][13]

Jurisprudence[]

Field wrote 544 opinions, more than any other justice save for Justice Samuel Miller, John P. Stevens,[14] and Clarence Thomas[15] (by comparison, Chief Justice Marshall wrote 508 opinions in his 34 years on the court).[16] According to journalist Brian Doherty, "Field was one of the pioneers of the concept (beloved by many libertarian legal thinkers) of substantive due process – the notion that the due process protected by the Fourteenth Amendment applied not merely to procedures but to the substance of laws as well."[17] Field's vocal advocacy of substantive due process was illustrated in his dissents to the Slaughter-House Cases and Munn v. Illinois. In the Slaughter-House Cases, Justice Field's dissent focused on the Privileges or Immunities clause, not the Due Process clause (which was important in the dissent of Justice Bradley as well as the dissent of Justice Swayne). In both Munn v. Illinois and Mugler v. Kansas, Justice Field based his dissent on the protection of property interests by the Due Process clause. One of Field's most notable opinions was his majority opinion in Pennoyer v. Neff, which set the standard on personal jurisdiction for the next 100 years. His views on due process were eventually adopted by the court's majority after he left the Supreme Court. In other cases he helped end the income tax (Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Company), limited antitrust law (United States v. E.C. Knight Company), and limited the power of the Interstate Commerce Commission. He also joined the majority in Plessy v. Ferguson that upheld racial segregation. Field dissented in the landmark case Strauder v. West Virginia, where the majority opinion held that the exclusion of African-Americans from juries violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.

Field's gravesite

Early in his career, Field wrote opinions against California's laws discriminating against the Chinese immigrants to that state.[18] Serving as an individual jurist in district court, he notably struck down the so-called 'Pigtail Ordinance' in 1879, which was regarded as discriminating against Chinese, making him unpopular with the Californian public. In his 1884 district court ruling, In re Look Tin Sing, he declared that children born in U.S. jurisdictions are U.S. citizens regardless of ancestry.[19] However, as a member of the U.S. Supreme Court, he penned opinions infused with racist anti-Chinese-American rhetoric, most notably in his majority opinion in The Chinese Exclusion Case, Chae Chan Ping v. United States, 130 U.S. 581 (1889), and in his dissent in Chew Heong v. United States, 112 U.S. 536 (1884).

Academic work[]

In November 1885, Field served as an original trustee of Leland Stanford Junior University.[20]

See also[]

Notes[]

  1. ^ The seat was created by 12 Stat. 794 as President Lincoln and Congress sought to change the ideological tilt of the Court.

References[]

  1. ^ McCloskey, Robert Green (1951). American Conservatism in the Age of Enterprise, 1865-1910. Harper & Row. pp. 86–92.
  2. ^ Tocklin, Adrian M. (1997). "Pennoyer v. Neff: The Hidden Agenda of Stephen J. Field". Seton Hall Law Review: 104.
  3. ^ McCloskey (1951), pp. 96-97.
  4. ^ Stephen Johnson Field
  5. ^ Tocklin (1997), p. 102.
  6. ^ Tocklin (1997), p. 105.
  7. ^ Johnson, J. Edward (1963). History of the California Supreme Court: The Justices 1850–1900 (PDF). Vol. 1. San Francisco: Bender Moss Co. pp. 65–72. Archived from the original (PDF) on August 17, 2018. Retrieved August 14, 2017. |volume= has extra text (help)
  8. ^ Gorham, George C. (2005). "The Story of the Attempted Assassination of Justice Field by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of California". Journal of the Supreme Court Historical Society. Vol. 30 no. 2. p. 105. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5818.2005.00102.x.
  9. ^ "Official Supreme Court media, Stephen Johnson Field". Oyez Project.
  10. ^ "History – The U.S. Marshals and Court Security". usmarshals.gov. Retrieved March 10, 2017.
  11. ^ Morris, Jeffrey B. (1981). "The Era of Mellville Weston Fuller". Supreme Court Historical Society 1981 Yearbook. Supreme Court Historical Society. Archived from the original on October 2, 2006.
  12. ^ Christensen, George A. (1983). "Here Lies the Supreme Court: Gravesites of the Justices". Supreme Court Historical Society Yearbook. Archived from the original on September 3, 2005. Retrieved September 3, 2005.CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  13. ^ Christensen, George A. (2008). "Here Lies the Supreme Court: Revisited". Journal of Supreme Court History. Vol. 33 no. 1. pp. 17–41. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5818.2008.00177.x..
  14. ^ https://www.law360.com/articles/1128989/a-look-back-at-justice-stevens-most-important-opinions
  15. ^ https://ballotpedia.org/Clarence_Thomas_%28Supreme_Court%29
  16. ^ Tocklin (1997), n. 174.
  17. ^ Doherty, Brian (2007). Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement. p. 28.
  18. ^ McCloskey (1951), pp. 109-111.
  19. ^ "In re Look Tin Sing (Ruling)" (PDF). libraryweb.uchastings.edu. Federal Reporter 21 F. 905, Circuit Court, D. California, September 29, 1884. Retrieved April 8, 2019.
  20. ^ "Leland Stanford Jr. University". Sonoma Democrat. November 28, 1885. p. 1. Retrieved August 15, 2017 – via California Digital Newspaper Collection.

Further reading[]

External links[]

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from the 14th district
1851–1852 		Succeeded by
A. G. Caldwell
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David Terry 		Chief Justice of California
1859–1863 		Succeeded by
Warner Cope
New seat Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
1863–1897 		Succeeded by
Joseph McKenna
 
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