The islander. [volume] (Friday Harbor, Wash.) 1891-1899, 1897-10-28
The Official Paper Of San Juan County.
THURSDAY. OCTOBER 2sth, 1897.
JUSTICE FIELDS RETIREMENT.

The resignation of Stephen J. Field
as an Associate Justice of the United
States Supreme Court brings to a dig
nified and graceful end the longest and
one of the most notable terms of SER
vice in the history of the Federal
bench. Assuming a place ON this
august tribunal amid the stress and
turmoils of the War of the Rebellion,
his continuance in the judicial harness
for more than third of century has
long been the single link which bound
the court of modern days with that of
the memorable era ushered in by Lin
coins first election to the presidency.
Taking the oath of Office under the
Chief Justiceship of fancy, and serv-
in the early years of his incumbency
with colleagues who had even sat with
Marshall, Justice Field has lived to
see the work of the appellate tribunal
carried on through varied and start
ling mutations of membership to the
very verge of the twentieth century.
Three new chief justices have been in
installed in office since he assembled the
bench and no less than nineteen COL
leagues have closed their terms by
death during the same period. or the
other four justices chosen by President
Lincoln-Chase and Swayne, of Ohio;
If Of
Illinois--only one, Miller, had pro-
Ionged his term beyond the second adj
ministration of Grant, and since the
death of Miller, during the administra-
ton of Harrison, Justice Field has
been left the sole survivor of that
group of brilliant jurists through
whose successive appointments Lin
coin infused new life, breadth and
vigor into a narrowing and hardening
Federal bench, and of whose attain
ments Mr.. Blaine has justly said,
in his "Twenty Years of Congress-"
that never before had the majority
membership of the Supreme Court,
which they constituted, been "superi-
or in all the qualities which adorn the
judicial character"
No era in American history has been
more crowded with problems Of vital
public interest than that which dates
from Justice Fields first entry
into the Supreme Court chamber, over
thirty-four years ago. In the adjudi-
cation of all the constitutional ques-
tons which have arisen out of war and
reconstruction legislation, and through
the still-continuing effort to define and
intefpet the new impress given to the
Federal government by the struggle
of 1S61-'65 for the assertion of National
unity and sovereignty, Justice Field
has been potent and continual inf1u-
ence; and his attitude on all these
questions has been marked by con-
sistency and moderation which have
left an ineffaceable mark on Federal
law. This is not the time or place to
estimate IN any technical or critical
way the services which the venerable
Justice now about to doff the ermine
has rendered to American jurispru-
dence. But surely any candid sum-
mary of Justice Fields career will echo
the judgment of President Mckinley,
that the high character and great
ability of his work will live and long
be remembered by grateful country.
Profoundly American by instinct
and training, broad and simple in his
tastes and of genial and sympathetic
personality, Justice Field has been for
thirty years an engaging and attrac-
tive figure in the private as we'll as the
public life of the Nations capital. Full
of years and honors, may he long en-
joy the ease and privacy which his
long devotion to public duty has so
amply earned.