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Early Life and Family

Stephen Johnson Field was born in 1816 in Connecticut into a family that would become unusually prominent in American law, business, and letters. His father, the Reverend David Dudley Field, was a Congregational minister, and his mother, Submit Dickinson Field, oversaw a household that prized education and public service. Among Stephen's siblings were three figures whose achievements framed his life and reputation: David Dudley Field II, a leading New York lawyer and advocate of procedural law reform; Cyrus W. Field, the entrepreneur behind the first successful transatlantic telegraph cable; and Henry Martyn Field, a clergyman and widely read author. A sister, Emilia, married the missionary Josiah Brewer; their son, David J. Brewer, would later sit with his uncle on the Supreme Court of the United States, an extraordinary family convergence in the nation's highest tribunal.

Education and Legal Formation

Raised in New England, Field received a classical education that was broadened by travel and study. As a young man he spent time abroad with his sister Emilia and her husband in the eastern Mediterranean, an experience that sharpened his linguistic and cultural interests and reinforced his intellectual self-confidence. He later attended college in Massachusetts and read law in New York, where he trained in the demanding environment shaped by his brother David Dudley Field II. That apprenticeship introduced him to the emerging movement for codified procedure and to the practical needs of a rapidly expanding commercial society. Admitted to the bar, he began practice in New York before deciding, like many ambitious young lawyers of his generation, to follow the opportunities of the American West.

California and the Gold Rush Era

Field moved to California in the aftermath of the Gold Rush, when miners, merchants, and lawyers were building civic institutions on the fly. He established himself in Marysville and quickly moved into public life. In the state assembly he helped give shape to the new legal order, working on the foundations of a civil system that could manage property claims, contracts, and local government across a tumultuous and fast-growing society. The experience made him a pragmatic administrator as well as a lawyer, and it positioned him for the judicial roles that followed.

California Supreme Court

Field won election to the Supreme Court of California in the 1850s, at a moment when the court wrestled with water rights, mining law, Spanish and Mexican land grants, and the reach of local authority. In 1859 he became chief justice, succeeding David S. Terry, who had resigned in the wake of the deadly duel that claimed the life of U.S. Senator David C. Broderick. As chief justice, Field worked to professionalize the court's operations and to articulate rules that could stabilize economic life without abandoning equitable considerations. His California opinions display an early concern with the security of property and contract, themes that would mark his later federal jurisprudence.

Appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court
In 1863 President Abraham Lincoln nominated Field to the Supreme Court of the United States, filling a new seat intended in part to bring western experience to the national bench during the Civil War. Field would serve from the late Civil War through the Gilded Age, one of the longest tenures in the Court's history. He sat under Chief Justices Salmon P. Chase, Morrison R. Waite, and Melville W. Fuller, and worked alongside justices such as Samuel F. Miller, Joseph P. Bradley, Nathan Clifford, and later his nephew David J. Brewer and John Marshall Harlan. While an associate justice, he also rode circuit in the West, especially the Ninth Circuit, maintaining a direct connection to the region that had shaped his outlook.

Jurisprudence and Notable Opinions

Field's jurisprudence is best known for its robust reading of due process and its caution toward expansive regulation of private enterprise. Early in the Reconstruction era he dissented in the Slaughter-House Cases, urging a broader understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment's Privileges or Immunities Clause than the Court adopted. He carried the same skepticism of regulatory power into Munn v. Illinois, where he warned that allowing broad rate regulation of grain warehouses risked eroding constitutional protections for property and contract.

At the same time, Field authored decisions that became pillars of American law in areas far beyond economic regulation. In Pennoyer v. Neff he wrote for the Court in a landmark exposition of personal jurisdiction, anchoring the validity of judgments to territorial principles and due process. He was also associated with the line of cases that extended equal protection and due process protections to corporations, a development often linked to Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. Although the Court's famous statement regarding corporate personhood appeared in the case's headnote rather than in a majority holding, Field's broader body of opinions reflected a consistent view that the Fourteenth Amendment limited state action against incorporated enterprises as well as against natural persons.

In other contexts, Field wrote opinions reflecting prevailing nineteenth-century views on public morals and political order. In Davis v. Beason, for example, he upheld restrictions aimed at combating polygamy in the territories, illustrating how his emphasis on social order could converge with then-dominant federal policy. His work often set him at odds with colleagues such as Justice Miller, who favored wider latitude for state regulation; the resulting debates became a defining intellectual feature of the postwar Court.

The Terry-Neagle Affair

The most dramatic episode of Field's life occurred off the bench. In 1889, while riding circuit in California, he was confronted by former California chief justice David S. Terry, with whom he had a long and bitter history dating back to their time on the state bench and later litigation involving Terry's wife, Sarah Althea. Anticipating danger, federal authorities detailed a deputy U.S. marshal, David Neagle, to protect Field. When Terry attacked Field at a railroad dining room, Neagle shot and killed Terry. The incident led to the Supreme Court's decision in In re Neagle, which affirmed that federal officers could act to protect a justice performing federal duties. Though Field did not write the opinion, the case became a touchstone for federal supremacy in safeguarding the judiciary.

Colleagues, Family, and Influence

Field's relationships shaped his legal outlook and public image. His brother David Dudley Field II remained a powerful intellectual influence, particularly in procedural reform and the ideal of accessible, codified law. Cyrus W. Field's audacious work in global communications embodied the era's celebration of enterprise, a spirit that Stephen often protected in his constitutional opinions. Henry Martyn Field's writings reflected the moral and religious discourse that framed many nineteenth-century legal debates. In Washington, Field engaged daily with judicial colleagues of formidable ability and strong views; he sparred most frequently with Samuel F. Miller, occasionally aligned with Joseph P. Bradley, and later found common ground at times with John Marshall Harlan. The arrival of his nephew, Justice David J. Brewer, underscored the family's unusual imprint on national law.

Retirement and Legacy

Field retired from the Supreme Court in 1897 after more than three decades on the bench and died in 1899. His legacy is complex and enduring. He helped craft enduring rules of jurisdiction and contributed heavily to the post, Civil War Constitution's contours, especially in due process and equal protection. His skepticism toward broad economic regulation made him a symbol of a constitutional tradition that prized private ordering and judicial limits on legislative power, a tradition later invoked during the so-called Lochner era and then reassessed in the twentieth century. Critics have faulted him for decisions that, in their view, gave corporations too much shelter from democratic control and for opinions that reflected restrictive views of public regulation and social policy. Yet even his critics acknowledge that he articulated a coherent constitutional vision and left a deep imprint on American legal development.

Character and Public Reputation

Contemporaries described Field as industrious, self-assured, and combative when he believed constitutional principle was at stake. The breadth of his experience, from frontier California to the marble halls of Washington, gave his opinions a distinctive combination of practical concern and doctrinal system. Surrounded by a family of reformers, entrepreneurs, and writers, appointed by Abraham Lincoln at a turning point in national history, and tested in public controversy by figures like David S. Terry, he stood at the intersection of American law and the nation's transformation in the nineteenth century.