FIELD, Stephen Johnson, American jurist: b. Haddam, Conn., 4 Nov. 1816; d. Washington, D. C., 9 April 1899. He was the second son of the Rev. David Dudley Field (q.v.), and a brother of David Dudley Field (q.v.), jurist and law reformer, and of Cyrus W. Field (q.v.), the inventor of the Atlantic cable. When he was 13 years of age young Field journeyed to the East with his brother-in-law, who was a missionary and spent three years in Smyrna and Athens studying Greek and other lan guages. After returning to America he gradu ated at Williams College and for a time there after studied law in New York city. In 1848, soon after he was admitted to the bar, he went to Europe where he remained for one year. In 1849 he joined the rush of easterners to the new gold diggings in California and settled at the mining camp known as Yubaville, since called Marysville. Here he was elected first alcalde under the old Mexican law of that Iregion,hokiing office unfll the organiAtion of the judiciary under the Constitution of the State. In 1850 he was elected to the State Miniature and was placed on the judiciary committee. He drew up several bills providing for articles in the State Code and some of his laws for min ers and mining were afterward adopted by other States. In 1857 he was elected judge of the
Supreme Court of California and two years later succeeded Judge Davis S. Terry (q.v.) as chief justice. The decisions of Justice Field in the next few years had much to do with the law of real property and large areas of disputed prop erty were assigned to legal ownership through his decision. In 1863 President Lincoln ap pointed him an'associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, which important position he held until 1897. Among his im portant decisions and opinions were those of the income tax cases, test oath cases and legal tender cases. He became eminent as one of the most celebrated authorities on constitutional law. In 1876 he was a member of the famous Electoral Commission which decided the Presi dency in favor of Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio, as against Samuel J. Tilden of New York. His service on the bench of the Supreme Court was the longest in the history of that learned body.