SAWYER, LORENZO (1820–1891)

In 1870 ulysses s. grant commissioned Lorenzo Sawyer of California judge of the Ninth Circuit Court, a position he filled until his death. Throughout these years, Sawyer shared circuit court duties with Supreme Court Justice stephen j. field.

Sawyer formulated a narrow interpretation of the public purpose doctrine and state police powers. He declared that a state could not, consistently with the fourteenth amendment, define the public purpose to permit mining companies to cause flooding of private lands. Sawyer also resisted local efforts to discriminate against the Chinese under the guise of the police power. In 1890 he struck down a San Francisco ordinance, which required Chinese to live and work in a designated area of the city, as an "arbitrary confiscation of property without due process or any process of law." Sawyer also invalidated other suspect uses of the police power that sought to harass the Chinese by outlawing the operation of laundries and opium parlors. Such measures, he ruled, placed "an unlawful inhibition upon the inalienable rights and liberties of [all] citizens.…"

Sawyer subscribed to the doctrine of dual federalism, but in In Re Neagle he forcefully recited the supremacy of the federal government. David Neagle, a United States marshal and bodyguard for Justice Field, had killed a man to protect Field. Sawyer issued a writ of habeas corpus releasing Neagle from custody by California officials on charges of murder. He held that the marshal had acted in pursuance of the laws of the United States and that "a state law, which contravenes a valid law of the United States, is, in the nature of things, necessarily void—a nullity."

Justice Field cast a large shadow over jurisprudence of the Ninth Circuit, but Sawyer also significantly shaped American constitutional law. His opinions were a major source of authority on the police powers of the states, the public purpose doctrine, and the Fourteenth Amendment.

Kermit L. Hall
(1986)

Bibliography

Swisher, Carl Brent 1930 Stephen J. Field, Craftsman of the Law. Pages 325–326, 332, 337, 342, 352, 353, 355, 358–359. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution.