Field, Stephen Johnson (b. Haddam, Conn., 4 Nov. 1816; d. Washington, D.C., 9 Apr. 1899; interred Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington), associate justice, 1863–1897. Field was the sixth of nine children born to Submit Dickinson, a descendant of a long line of New England Puritans, and David Dudley Field, a strict Congregationalist minister who brought up his children to be pious Puritans. The family moved to Stock‐bridge, Massachusetts, when Stephen was still a baby. At thirteen he was sent to Turkey with his sister, whose husband was a missionary, and spent several years traveling in the Greek islands and residing in Athens, an experience that greatly broadened his outlook. As a seventeen‐year‐old youth he entered Williams College, where he was deeply influenced by the teachings of Mark Hopkins and from which he graduated at the top of his class in 1837. He read law in the New York office of his brother, David Dudley Field, who was fast becoming one of America's leading lawyers, and with whom he practiced law until 1848. Stephen also spent a year traveling in Europe with his father and other family members. Thus far, however, he had shown none of the leadership qualities that were to become so prominent later in his life.

A craving for excitement led him to voyage to California during the Gold Rush year of 1849. Instead of prospecting, however, he quickly entered legal practice and politics, becoming the equivalent of mayor‐plus‐judge in Marysville; he also became wealthy through real estate speculation and fees. Field emerged as a colorful and controversial character in the unsettled days of the little community, making enemies whose hostility would follow him even to the Supreme Court. Elected to the California state legislature in 1850, he was the major contributor to the civil and criminal laws it passed in 1851, which were widely copied in the western states. He served only one year, however, before being defeated in a race for the state senate in 1851. Turning his attention wholly to the practice of law, he quickly became one of the state's leading lawyers, and he was elected to the state supreme court in 1857.

In his six years on the state court Field achieved an enviable reputation, which traveled beyond the state's boundaries. He did not, however, cease to acquire enemies, both political and personal. Despite this, when Congress created a tenth Supreme Court seat, Field was the logical appointee. He was not only a well‐regarded lawyer and judge but also a strong Unionist (although a Democrat). A California appointment was thought to be particularly useful both politically and legally, for it might help to cement the new state to the Union and it would provide the Court with a member familiar with the distinctive characteristics of California mining and land law. He took his seat on the Court in December 1863.

Field sat on what was to become one of the strongest Supreme Courts in history. There has never been a quadrumvirate that has surpassed in ability that of Field, Samuel F. Miller, Joseph P. Bradley, and John Marshall Harlan. Each was stubborn, dogmatic, and intellectually arrogant, however—a situation that led to a high level of disagreement and dissent. No great case decided during Field's tenure was without a strong dissent, which greatly reduced the value of the Court's decisions as precedents. And, in fact, most of that Court's rulings have been reversed or modified over time.

Field's philosophy as a judge was dictated by an attachment to an ideal of inalienable rights that, however, did not have specifically to appear in the Constitution. He was, in other words, strongly result‐oriented: if he felt that a claimed right was inalienable he could find a place in the Constitution for it (usually the Fourteenth Amendment in state cases). His opinions are thus studded with dogmatic assertions that in many cases are not strongly supported by any constitutional provision.

Increasingly through the 1870s and 1880s Field came to believe in a rather extreme version of an inalienable right of property, protected from interference by the states by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This theory, known as “substantive due process” because it looks at substantive rights (especially the right to hold and use property) rather than process, was probably first suggested to Field when John A. Campbell used it in arguing for the rights of Louisiana butchers in the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873). Certainly he used it in his dissent in that case and enlarged on it in another dissent in Munn v. Illinois (1877). In the latter case he argued that Illinois could not regulate the prices charged by grain elevators. In both cases there is a strong natural law flavor to Field's arguments, which most of the justices shared to some extent; but the Californian had to campaign for twenty years before the Court's majority would accept the doctrine of substantive due process, and the Court would never carry it to the extent that Field probably would have wished. (See Due Process, Substantive.)

Field was thus the leader of the Court's movement toward reading laissez‐faire into the Constitution—a movement that reached its apogee in Harlan's opinion in Smyth v. Ames (1898), Rufus Peckham's opinion in Lochner v. New York (1905), and in various decisions of the Taft Court in the 1920s (See Laissez‐Faire Constitutionalism). Not content with providing such protection for the burgeoning large corporations of the day, Field went on to attempt to build bulwarks against federal action as well. A notorious example is his concurring opinion in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. (1895), in which he made plain his fear that a federal income tax would be but the first movement in a slide into communism. He also participated in the decision limiting the power of the federal government to break up monopolies (United States v. E. C. Knight Co., 1895), and of the Interstate Commerce Commission to prescribe railroad rates (Cincinnati, New Orleans & Texas Pacific Railway v. ICC, 1896). Using various arguments, he also argued against state regulation of railroads (e.g., in Stone v. Wisconsin, 1876), although he was often in the minority in such cases. In none of these areas were his arguments solidly grounded in the Constitution; he was reduced to hortatory statements based on the theory that private property is almost always to be protected: that is, that property is an inalienable right.

Like most judges, Field was not entirely consistent in his record of voting to protect private corporations. Notably, he was often ready to find them—especially railroads—liable for compensation to injured or killed workers under the common law “fellow servant” doctrine. Here he was, again, often at odds with the Court majority (Baltimore & Ohio Railroad v. Baugh, 1893).

Theories of economics and finance were freely used by both sides in the much‐debated Legal Tender Cases, which involved the constitutionality of the issuance of paper money by the federal government. Field wrote at great length to prove that there was an inalienable right to the use of gold and silver as currency and thus that there was no constitutional power to force Americans to accept paper money as legal tender (Knox v. Lee, 1871). Nevertheless, the five‐justice majority ruled the law to be valid, reversing an earlier decision. Field repeated much the same arguments—but this time as a minority of one—in 1884 in Juilliard v. Greenman.

On the California Supreme Court and later as a U.S. circuit court judge, Field applied the idea of inalienable rights to the Chinese, who were discriminated against by California law. This made him politically unpopular in the Golden State, and it may be because of this that he slowly gave up his “extreme” opinions against anti‐Chinese state or local enactments (Barbier v. Connolly, 1885). His record on the Chinese cases shows a good deal of inconsistency, which he never bothered to explain or even acknowledge.

Despite the Fourteenth Amendment's plain purpose to protect African‐Americans from state discrimination, Field showed no tendency to give effect to its provisions. Indeed, he went so far as to claim, in a dissenting opinion, that the amendment did not even secure for African‐Americans the right to serve on juries (Ex parte Virginia, 1880). In the frequent cases in which the Court majority refused to use the amendment to protect African‐Americans' rights, Field merely went along with the majority, writing no opinions. Where, then, was his doctrine of inalienable rights? The civil rights cases illustrate the major difficulty with such doctrines—that of definition. In Field's case it became obvious that the rights of private property were more inalienable than the right to equal protection under the law. Each judge had to define the word “right” for himself, and the Constitution disappeared in the process.

Field, true to his beliefs, did not retire from politics when he ascended the supreme bench. He served as a Democratic member of the electoral commission that decided the Hayes‐Tilden presidential election in 1876, voting down the line for the Democrat Tilden. When Hayes was declared the victor, Field manifested his disagreement by refusing to accompany the rest of the Court to the inauguration. Urged on by his brothers, the Californian became a more or less open candidate for the presidency in 1880, but, due partly to old and new enmities made in California, he failed badly at the nominating convention. Nevertheless, he remained a storm center in California politics for some years. He also, apparently, expected that President Grover Cleveland would appoint him chief justice when Morrison Waite died in 1888, since he was the only Democrat on the bench and he felt that Cleveland owed him some political debts. Cleveland felt otherwise and appointed an outsider, Melville Fuller; Field never forgave the president. (See Extrajudicial Activities.)

The events leading to the killing, in California, of Judge David S. Terry by Deputy Marshall David Neagle, are too complex to summarize. Neagle shot Terry in an apparent attempt to protect Field's life. In a celebrated case that reached the Supreme Court itself, Neagle's act was upheld as being pursuant to his duty to the United States (In re Neagle, 1890). It was another example of Field's tendency to appear at the center of controversy, whether legal, political, or personal.

Because he was intent on remaining on the Court longer than the thirty‐three‐year record then held by John Marshall, Field refused to step down even when diplomatically asked to do so by Justice Harlan at the insistence of the other justices. Field had done less and less Court work through the 1890s, and by the time of his retirement was practically useless to his colleagues. An element in his decision not to resign earlier was his extreme dislike of both Presidents Cleveland and Harrison: he did not want either of them to appoint his successor. After his retirement in 1897, he became increasingly feeble, turned back to the religion he had largely ignored during most of his life, and died after a brief illness in 1899.

Field was undoubtedly a chief contributor to the development of Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence, especially that of the Due Process Clause. If he turned that provision to uses that were neither intended by the amendment's framers nor required by its words, he was at least in tune with his times and with the felt needs of an industrializing society. Substantive due process was, it is true, dropped by later, more liberal Courts, which did not share Field's attachment to the rights of private property; but these same liberals were to find the doctrine useful in developing noneconomic inalienable rights such as the right to personal privacy used to justify the right to abortion. Field, in his grave, may find a certain ironic satisfaction in the attempts of his critics to define very different inalienable rights by calling on the same natural law approach he used in constitutional interpretation. And who is to say whether Field or William O. Douglas chose rights that are truly inalienable?

Bibliography

Howard Jay Graham , Justice Field and the Fourteenth Amendment. Yale Law Journal 52 (September 1943): 851–889.
Robert Green McCloskey , American Conservatism in the Age of Enterprise (1951), chap. 4.
Carl Brent Swisher, and Stephen J. Field , Craftsman of the Law (1930).
G. Edward White , The American Judicial Tradition (1976), chap. 4.

Loren P. Beth

FIELD, STEPHEN JOHNSON

Stephen Johnson Field served as associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1863 to 1897, making him the second longest serving justice in the history of the Court. Field was a conservative who consistently upheld the interests of business. He became the prime advocate of the theory of "substantive due process," which favored private property rights over attempts by state and federal government to regulate the economy. Conservatives on the Court used substantive due process to strike down regulatory legislation until the 1930s.

Field was born in Haddam, Connecticut, on November 4, 1816. His family moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, when he was a young child. At thirteen he was sent to Turkey to live with his sister and her missionary husband. They later moved to Athens, Greece, where Field remained until entering Williams College in 1833. After graduating in 1837 he read the law with his older brother, david dudley field, who had emerged as a prominent New York City attorney and legal reformer.

In 1849 Field left New York City for the Gold Rush in northern California. He speculated in land, developed a thriving legal practice involving property and mineral rights, and organized the town of Marysville. He became Marysville's mayor and judge. In 1850 he was elected to the state legislature. He was instrumental in organizing standards of procedure for civil and criminal law and he also drafted mining laws. He ran for the state senate in 1851 but was defeated.

"The present assault upon capital is but the beginning. It will be but the stepping-stone to others, larger and more sweeping, 'til our political contests will become a war of the poor against the rich; awar constantly growing in intensity and bitterness."
—Stephen J. Field

Field was elected to the California Supreme Court in 1857. He became chief justice in 1859 and served until 1863. He concentrated his efforts on cases dealing with titles to land and mineral rights. In 1863 President abraham lincoln, a Republican, appointed Field to the U.S. Supreme Court. Though Field was a Democrat, he was a loyal Unionist during the Civil War and a well-respected state judge.

Field established his opposition to government interference with business in the slaughter-house cases, 83 U.S. (16 Wall) 36, 21 L. Ed. 394 (1873). The case involved a Louisiana state law that allowed one meat company the exclusive right to slaughter livestock in New Orleans. Other packing companies were required to pay a fee for using the slaughterhouses. These companies filed suit, claiming that the law violated the privileges and immunities clause of the fourteenth amendment.

The Court upheld the Louisiana monopoly law, ruling that the Privileges and Immunities Clause had limited effect as it only reached privileges and immunities guaranteed by U.S. citizenship, not state citizenship. Field wrote a dissent, maintaining that "the privileges and immunities designated are those which of right belong to the citizens of all free governments." He saw the clause as a powerful tool to keep state government out of the affairs of business and the economy.

Field saw an opportunity to use the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause to curtail government interference with business. He first articulated the idea of substantive due process in his dissent in munn v. illinois, 94U.S. 113, 24 L. Ed. 77 (1876). The majority upheld the Illinois legislature's right to fix maximum storage rates charged by grain elevators and public warehouses and to require licenses to operate these facilities.

Field contended that the regulations violated due process and that under the U.S. system of government the legislature lacked the power "to fix the price which anyone shall receive for his property of any kind." By 1890 he had convinced the majority of the Court that his view of the Due Process Clause was correct and had extended its reach to the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause, using it to invalidate federal legislation that regulated business. Until the 1930s the Court overturned a succession of state and federal laws that attempted to regulate business and labor.

Field voted to strike down a federal income tax in pollock v. farmers' loan and trust co., 157 U.S. 429, 15 S. Ct. 673, 39 L. Ed. 759(1895), seeing the tax as a plot against capitalism. In his concurring opinion, Field warned, "The persistent assault upon capital is but the beginning. It will be a stepping stone to others larger and more sweeping till our political contests will become a war of the poor against the rich, a war constantly growing in intensity and bitterness."

Field entertained political ambitions while on the Court. In 1880 he sought the democratic party presidential nomination but did poorly at the nominating convention. He

became increasingly infirm during the 1890s and did little work. He was determined, however, to break John Marshall's record of thirty-three years on the Court. He achieved that record in 1896 (later to be surpassed by williamo. douglas) and retired in 1897. He died in Washington, D.C., on April 9, 1899.

further readings

Kens, Paul. 1997. Justice Stephen Field: Shaping Liberty from the Gold Rush to the Gilded Age. Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas.

Pomeroy, John Norton. 2003. Some Account of the Work of Stephen J. Field as a Legislator, State Judge, and Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States Clark, N.J.: Lawbook Exchange.

Stephen Johnson Field

The American jurist Stephen Johnson Field (1816-1899) was an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and a powerful partisan of unimpeded business expansion.

Stephen Field was born on Nov. 4, 1816, in Haddam, Conn., the son of a Congregationalist minister. He spent 2 years in Europe and the Middle East before entering Williams College, from which he graduated in 1837. He read law in the firm of his brother David in New York City, then moved to California in 1849.

The contradiction in Field's life between outrageous personal boldness and determination for law and order was a reflection of the frontier. At Yurbaville (later Marysville), Calif., as justice of the peace, Field was noted for his arbitrary but firm enforcement of the law. Despite an undignified controversy with another judge, he was elected in 1857 to the state's supreme court.

Field was a Unionist in the Civil War, and in 1863 President Abraham Lincoln appointed him to the U.S. Supreme Court. Notable among his early court writings were dissents in the Slaughter-House Cases (1873) and Munn v. Illinois (1873). In the latter Field presaged his philosophy of protecting business from the competition of governmentally created monopolies and from governmental regulation. This legal philosophy, referred to as "substantive due process," expressed the idea of putting limits on government in order to preserve liberty, along with the notion that government interference in the jungle of economic competition was unnatural.

Substantive due process came into full force in Field's circuit court opinion, later upheld by the Supreme Court, San Mateo v. Southern Pacific R.R. Co. (1882). Here, a corporation was defined as a "person" and was thus protected by the 14th Amendment from any deprivation of its rights by government intervention "without due process of law." This clause was a firm barrier against regulation, and with its protection, business enjoyed a legal immunity that lasted until the 1930s.

Field was a powerful voice in the Democratic party. He greatly resented being bypassed for the chief justiceship in 1888 by President Grover Cleveland. A gregarious man, he was not above sharing the hospitality of men whose corporations were engaged in litigation before the Supreme Court.

After serving on the Supreme Court longer than any other justice in its history, Field resigned in 1897. He died on April 9, 1899, in Washington, D.C.

Further Reading

Field's Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California (1880; rev. ed. 1893) is illuminating. Carl Brent Swisher, Stephen J. Field: Craftsman of the Law (1930), is the standard biography. Also of value is the essay on Field in Robert G. McCloskey, American Conservatism in the Age of Enterprise: A Study ofWilliam Graham Sumner, Stephen J. Field, and Andrew Carnegie (1951).

Additional Sources

The Fields and the law: essays, San Francisco: United States District Court for the Northern District of California Historical Society; New York: Federal Bar Council, 1986. □

Stephen Johnson Field 1816–99, American jurist, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1863–97), b. Haddam, Conn. After practicing law for several years in New York City with his brother David Dudley Field , he went to California in 1849, settled at Marysville, and in 1850 was elected to the legislature. He secured the passage of an act reorganizing the state judiciary and drafted codes of civil and criminal procedure based on his brother's codes for New York but adapted to certain local needs, such as established Spanish customs and miners' practices. His recommendations became the basis of mining law in all of the Western states and territories. In 1857, Field was elected as a Democrat to the California supreme court, becoming chief justice two years later. President Lincoln appointed him to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1863. A staunch conservative, he opposed government regulation of business activities and played a major role in the Supreme Court's extension of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to include corporations.

Bibliography: See his Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California (1880, repr. 1968); biography by C. B. Swisher (1930, repr. 1963).

Field, Stephen J[ohnson] (1816–99), New York lawyer, emigrated to California (1849), where he drafted codes of civil and criminal procedure and established the basis of Western mining law. He was chief justice of the state supreme court (1859–63), resigning to become a member of the U.S. Supreme Court, in which he served until 1897. His Reminiscences of Early Days in California was published in 1880.