Kens speaks to Supreme Court Historical Society
on the legacy of Justice Stephen J. Field

Dr. Paul Kens

June 2007—Dr. Paul Kens, Professor of Political Science, was one of four lecturers invited to speak in the United States Supreme Court Historical Society’s Leon Silverman Lecture Series in March. Kens spoke in the Supreme Court Chambers on the life of Justice Stephen J. Field, about whom he has written a book. He was introduced by Jeffrey Menear, chief of staff to Chief Justice John Roberts.

Justice Stephen J. Field

Field, a Gold Rush forty-niner, sat on the Supreme Court for 34 years—from 1863 to 1897—outlasting eight presidents and three chief justices. Kens said Field is usually thought of as an arch conservative, but he argues that Field’s ideas about economic liberty—influenced by his experiences on the California frontier—were revolutionary in the sense that they rejected tradition and gave an entirely new shape to the way Americans think about their government and liberty. In a time when court decisions regarding property rights often found in favor of the government or the community interest, Field believed that the political and legal system should allow men of destiny—wealthy, powerful, self-made men—the freedom to guide economic and social development of the country and to reap the rewards of their actions. His beliefs affected constitutional doctrine in a revolutionary way by deemphasizing democracy—the government’s or community’s interest—and emphasizing the individual’s liberty with regard to property rights.

Read the full text of Dr. Ken's speech on Justice Field's shaping of America's ideas about government and liberty.

Kens argues that Field’s philosophy is at the heart of the constitutional thought of a new breed of economic libertarians. These scholars maintain that the Constitution significantly restricts the state’s power to interfere with an individual’s liberty to use his or her property. They propose that cases involving economic regulation are a matter of balancing economic liberty against state power, and that courts should apply a presumption in favor of liberty.

The lecture was Kens’ second invited lecture before the Supreme Court Historical Society. His first lecture, in 1996, was titled “The Dawn of the Conservative Era,” with an introduction by Justice Stephen G. Breyer. The lecture focused on the Supreme Court from 1900 to 1937.

Dr. Kens' book, Justice Field: Shaping Liberty from the Gold Rush to the Gilded Age

Kens received the Hughes-Gossett Award for Historical Excellence from the Supreme Court Historical Society in 1996. Under a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, he published a book on Field in 1997, titled Justice Field: Shaping Liberty from the Gold Rush to the Gilded Age, and he is the author of the 1988 book Lochner v. New York: Economic Regulation on Trial, both published by the University Press of Kansas.

Currently, Kens is writing a book on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1873 to 1887, also with a fellowship from the NEH. The book, part of a University of South Carolina Press series on the history of the U.S. Supreme Court, will cover the Reconstruction-era tenure of the Court’s seventh Chief Justice, Morrison R. Waite. During Waite’s tenure (1873-1887), the Supreme Court decided its first cases interpreting the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, adopted after the Civil War. These amendments abolished slavery (13th Amendment), established citizenship rights (14th Amendment), and guaranteed the right to vote to former slaves and U.S. citizens of any race (15th Amendment). Notably, decisions by the Waite court reduced the protections against discrimination that the 14th Amendment afforded to African Americans and set the scene for the later use of the Amendment as a protection for business interests against government regulation.