Biography of one of the first Supreme Court judges of California, and one of the most controversial figures in early California history.

Inspiring and instructive biographies of the 100 most influential judges from state and federal courts in one easy-to-access volume. Great American Judges profiles 100 outstanding judges and justices in a full sweep of U.S. history. Chosen by lawyers, historians, and political scientists, these men and women laid the foundation of U.S. law. A complement to Great American Lawyers, together these two volumes create a complete picture of our nation's top legal minds from colonial times to today. Following an introduction on the role of judges in American history are A–Z biographical entries portraying this diverse group from extraordinarily different backgrounds. Students and history enthusiasts will appreciate the accomplishments of these role models and the connections between their inspiring lives and their far-reaching legal decisions. William Rehnquist, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and 12 other Supreme Court justices are found alongside federal judges like Skelly Wright, who ordered school desegregation in 1960. Influential state judges such as Rose Elizabeth Bird, California's first woman Supreme Court Chief Justice, are also featured.

"Among the judicial immigrants ... were the southerner David S. Terry of Texas and the northerner Stephen J. Field of New York. These men served on California's highest court during its formative, strenuous years from 1855 to 1863. ... The intellectual similarities and differences that these two shared ... played themselves out over a period of 35 years and brought about a series of events that neither man could have envisioned. Their exchanges began as wary judicial amity within the courtroom, but in short order spilled out into the community as public grudges. Neither judge could tolerate the other's regional provincialism; hence, lifelong resentments inevitably turned into a bitterness that led to tragedy"--Foreword, p. vii.

Outspoken and controversial, Stephen Field served on the Supreme Court from his appointment by Lincoln in 1863 through the closing years of the century. No justice had ever served longer on the Court, and few were as determined to use the Court to lead the nation into a new and exciting era. Paul Kens shows how Field ascended to such prominence, what influenced his legal thought and court opinions, and why both are still very relevant today. One of the famous gold rush forty-niners, Field was a founder of Marysville, California, a state legislator, and state supreme court justice. His decisions from the state bench and later from the federal circuit court often placed him in the middle of tense conflicts over the distribution of the land and mineral wealth of the new state. Kens illuminates how Field's experiences in early California influenced his jurisprudence and produced a theory of liberty that reflected both the ideals of his Jacksonian youth and the teachings of laissez-faire economics. During the time that Field served on the U.S. Supreme Court, the nation went through the Civil War and Reconstruction and moved from an agrarian to an industrial economy in which big business dominated. Fear of concentrated wealth caused many reformers of the time to look to government as an ally in the preservation of their liberty. In the volatile debates over government regulation of business, Field became a leading advocate of substantive due process and liberty of contract, legal doctrines that enabled the Court to veto state economic legislation and heavily influenced constitutional law well into the twentieth century. In the effort to curb what he viewed as the excessive power of government, Field tended to side with business and frequently came into conflict with reformers of his era. Gracefully written and filled with sharp insights, Kens' study sheds new light on Field's role in helping the Court define the nature of liberty and determine the extent of constitutional protection of property. By focusing on the political, economic, and social struggles of his time, it explains Field's jurisprudence in terms of conflicting views of liberty and individualism. It firmly establishes Field as a persuasive spokesman for one side of that conflict and as a prototype for the modern activist judge, while providing an important new view of capitalist expansion and social change in Gilded Age America.

Drawing on six years of research, this book covers the military service and postwar lives of notable Confederate veterans who moved into Northern California at the end the Civil War. Biographies of 101 former rebels are provided, from the oldest brother of the Clanton Gang to the son of a President to plantation owners, dirt farmers, criminals and everything in between.

Early outlaws tell their own raw tales of holdups, shootouts, and desperate flights from the law. Witness the cruel confessions of California bandits during the opening days of the Gold Rush, stage robbers, and California highwaymen. These tales of harrowing and sometimes hilarious antics are accompanied by many rare photographs.

Freedom's Frontier: California and the Struggle over Unfree Labor, Emancipation, and Reconstruction

A History of American Law has become a classic for students of law, American history and sociology across the country. In this brilliant and immensely readable book, Lawrence M. Friedman tells the whole fascinating story of American law from its beginnings in the colonies to the present day. By showing how close the life of the law is to the economic and political life of the country, he makes a complex subject understandable and engrossing. A History of American Law presents the achievements and failures of the American legal system in the context of America's commercial and working world, family practices and attitudes toward property, slavery, government, crime and justice. Now Professor Friedman has completely revised and enlarged his landmark work, incorporating a great deal of new material. The book contains newly expanded notes, a bibliography and a bibliographical essay.