David Dudley Field II

David Dudley Field ( born February 13, 1805 in Haddam, Connecticut, † April 13, 1894 in New York ) was an American jurist. Various legislative reforms go back to him, which led to a standardization and simplification of the law in a number of U.S. states. In 1873 he was co-founder of the Institut de Droit international ( Institute of International Law ). Four years later, he worked for a short time as a member of the U.S. Congress.

Life

Field was born in 1805 in Haddam, Connecticut as the oldest of four brothers. His father was a preacher and local historian, his younger brother Stephen Johnson Field was later judge of the Supreme Court he was taught by private tutors and graduated from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, graduating in 1925. He then studied law in Albany and New York in 1928 and received his license to practice law. In the following years he practiced successfully as a lawyer in New York and wrote a series of papers on various legal topics. He became more and more convinced that the unification and simplification of the relevant procedural rules is necessary for the then Common Law in the United States, based on judgments in precedents. For this reason, in 1836 he traveled to Europe to study the legal systems of England, France and some other countries.

After his return to the United States, he devoted himself in the following decades, the self-imposed goal of unification of the rules of procedure of the common law. He published for this purpose pamphlets and articles in various journals. In 1841 he ran unsuccessfully for the Legislative Assembly of the State of New York. Six years later he was appointed head of a commission to revise the legal system of the State, and worked in that capacity until 1850. During the same year, the Commission presented a new Civil Procedure Law, which was adopted by the Legislative Assembly and, under the name Field code in the legal history went down. Between 1857 and 1865 he was a member of a commission whose task was the revision of the areas civil and criminal law. The relevant proposals were implemented in the state of New York only to a small extent, but served as a template for appropriate legislation in more than 20 other states and in British India.

In 1867 he published a proposal for an international court of arbitration for the settlement of disputes between States. In September 1873 he was involved in the Belgian city of Ghent, together with ten other lawyers from different countries in the founding of the Institut de Droit international ( Institute of International Law ). This institution, whose goal is the advancement of international law, was in 1904 awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

From 11 January to 3 March 1877 he was one of the Democrats for a short time at the House of Representatives of the United States to occupy the vacant seat of Smith Ely, who had previously resigned as Mayor of New York due to his choice. He then continued to work until his death as a lawyer. He died in 1894 in New York.

Works (selection)

• Outlines of an International Code. Second Edition. New York 1878
• Speeches, Arguments and Miscellaneous Papers. New York 1884