STEPHEN, SIR JAMES FITZJAMES, BART. (1829 1894), English lawyer, judge and publicist, was born in London on March 3, 1829, the third child and second son of Sir James Ste phen. He was educated at Eton, London university, and Trinity, Cambridge. He was already acquainted with Sir Henry Maine (q.v.), six years his senior, and then newly appointed to the chair of civil law. This acquaintance now ripened into a perfect friend ship, which ended only with Maine's death in 1888.
Stephen was called to the bar in 1854, and in 1859 he was appointed recorder of Newark. In 1863 he published his Gen eral View of the Criminal Law of England (2nd recast ed. 1890). This was the first attempt that had been made since Blackstone to explain the principles of English law and justice in a literary form, and it had a thoroughly deserved success. All this time Stephen kept up a great deal of miscellaneous writing, and the foundation of the Pall Mall Gazette in 1865 gave him a new field. The decisive point of his work was in the summer of 1869, when he accepted the post of legal member of council in India. Fitzjames Stephen's friend Maine was his immediate predeces sor in this office. Guided by Maine's comprehensive genius, the government of India had entered on a period of systematic legis lation which was to last about twenty years. The materials for considerable parts of this plan had been left by Maine.
Stephen had the task of working them into their definite shape and conducting the bills through the Legislative Council. This he did with wonderful energy, with efficiency and workmanship ade quate to the purpose, if sometimes rough according to English notions, and so as to leave his own individual mark in many places. The Native Marriages Act of 1872 was the result of deep
consideration on both Maine's and Stephen's part. The draft of the Contract Act was materially altered in Stephen's hands before, also in 1872, it became law. The Evidence Act of the same year was entirely Stephen's own. He came home in 1872.
Indian experience had supplied Stephen with the motive for his next piece of work, which historians of the common law may well regard as his greatest title to remembrance. The materials which Stephen had long been collecting took permanent shape in the History of the Criminal Law of England (1883), which, though not free from inequalities and traces of haste, must long remain the standard work on the subject. The Bills of Exchange Act (1882), the Partnership Act (1890), the Sale of Goods Act (1893) and the Marine Insurance Act (passed 1906) are indirectly due to his efforts. In 1879 Stephen became judge of the queen's bench division. He resigned that office in April 1891, after a breakdown, and died on March II, 1894, having filled a not very long life with a surprising amount of work, of which a large pro portion was of permanent value. He married Mary Cunningham in 1855.
See Sir Leslie Stephen, Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen (London, 1895) , with bibliographical appendix, a model biography ; same author's article in the Dict. Nat. Biog.; Letters with biographical Notes, by his daughter, Caroline Emelia Stephen (1907). See also Sir C. P. Ilbert, "Sir James Stephen as a Legislator," Law Quart. Rev. X. 222.