Симеон Эбен Балдвин: Американ судьясы және саяхатшысы

American judge (1840–1927)

Simeon Eben Baldwin (February 5, 1840 – January 30, 1927) was an American jurist, law professor, and politician who served as the 65th governor of Connecticut.

The son of jurist, Connecticut governor and U. S. Senator Roger Sherman Baldwin and Emily Pitkin Perkins, Baldwin was born and lived for much of his life in New Haven, Connecticut, and was one of nine children. Among his ancestors were the initial five governors of the Connecticut Colony. Another ancestor was Roger Sherman, a signatory to the Declaration of Independence. His father had served from 1844 to 1846 as the governor of Connecticut. As a boy he attended the Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven, Connecticut. Active in all its alumni work, he was, more specifically, for many years president of its board of trustees; in 1910, on the occasion of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the school, he delivered a discourse on its history; when shortly before his death it became necessary to house the school in new quarters, he was one of the largest, if not the largest, of the individual donors whose contributions made possible a set of modern buildings for what he was fond of referring to as the fourth oldest institution of learning in the United States. From the Hopkins Grammar School he went to Yale College, from which he was graduated with the class of 1861. and served as president of the American Bar Association from 1890 to 1891. During the middle portion of his life he was actively engaged in teaching law. Here also he showed ability. One who studied law under him and like him became chief justice of the supreme court of errors of Connecticut says that his old pupils regard his work as a teacher "as more distinctive and weightier in influence upon human life than any other portion of his work. Probably in his day not a half dozen teachers of the law in our country could be placed in his class" (American Bar Association Journal, February 1927, p. 74). From 1897 to 1910, Baldwin was a member of the Connecticut State Supreme Court, where he presided as chief justice from 1907 to 1910. He was a member also of the National Institute of Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Society, elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1893, and a corresponding member of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, and L'Institut de Droit Comparé. Baldwin was among the incorporators of Connecticut College at its founding in 1911, and he served on its board of trustees through 1924. His connections with national and international matters touching law and its ramifications were not restricted to membership in learned societies. In 1899 he was appointed by the State Department a delegate from the United States to the Sixth International Prison Congress, which met the next year at Brussels. Again in 1905 he was United States delegate to a similar congress held at Budapest and was made its vice president. At this congress he presented his report on the question "By what principles and in what manner may convicts be given work in the fields, or other public work in open air?" In 1904, appointed by President Roosevelt one of the delegates to represent the United States, he was elected vice president of the Universal Congress of Lawyers and Jurists held in connection with the St. Louis Exposition of that year. His writings cover a number of fields. Among his more pretentious works are: A Digest of All the Reported Cases of Conn. (2 vols., 1871, 1882), The historic policy of the United States as to annexation. (New Haven: Hoggson & Robinson, 1893), Cases on Railroad Law (1896), Modern Political Institutions (1898), American Railroad Law (1904), The American Judiciary (1905), The Relations of Education to Citizenship (1912), Life and Letters of Simeon Baldwin (1919), The Young Man and the Law (1919). He was a most prolific writer of articles and pamphlets. Some ten years before his death he collected and presented to the Yale Law School nearly a hundred of these in four bound volumes which he entitled in order of numbering: Law and Law Reform, Studies in History, International and Constitutional Law, and Studies in Legal Education and Social Sciences. While these titles very aptly classify his literary output the volumes themselves do not contain all his miscellaneous publications. He was not above medium height, somewhat slight of figure and seemingly frail in physique, though this frailty was in appearance only as he was a man of tremendous, tireless energy. Although in no sense athletic, he made some sort of exercise in the open air each day almost a religious duty. At one time this took the form of bicycle rides, though he soon gave these up in favor of walking. His rule was to cover at least four miles a day, rain or shine, and there was no part of the less congested portions of New Haven and its environs over which he had not many times traveled as he walked unhurriedly alone, stooping somewhat, buried in thought, compelled by poor eyesight to keep his gaze fixed upon his path a few feet ahead of him. This methodical exercise he kept up until, in his last years, injuries received as the result of a fall confined him to his home. His personality, externally at least, was cold, dignified, and grave. Some of those who knew him best say that he was in reality warm hearted but the characteristics that made an impression on every one were his reserve and his austerity; in general he was an object of respect rather than of affection; he had none of the weaknesses that make men lovable. As deeply religious as any of his Puritan ancestors, he was most broadly tolerant of the beliefs of others. His conception of civic duty was Roman, but he was ever willing to oppose even the State in defending what he regarded as the constitutional and legal rights of the individual. He was frugal to such a degree that on one occasion when traveling as governor with his staff, instead of partaking of a sumptuous dinner in a dining car specially provided for them, he rode in a coach and ate a sandwich which he had brought from home. With this frugality he combined a generosity even more marked. Part of his life was lived in the days of high hats. Such hats, when they became old, were usually donated to the missionaries. To quote from one who for many years served with Judge Baldwin on the committee of a missionary society, "He used to turn in his old high hat at the shop for fifteen cents, but he would give $1,500 to the committee for missions." He was unyielding where a principle was involved; but in matters of mere policy he had the remarkable ability, once he was outvoted, to make the policy of the majority his own even though he had strenuously opposed it. Quiet and unassuming in manner he could be aggressive when he deemed it necessary, as he did in his controversy with Roosevelt when the latter dared to ridicule his ability as a judge. Prompt and unfailing in meeting appointments, unimportant though they might be, he demanded the same consideration from others, even refusing to wait for dinner guests who might be late. Both by nature and training he was conservative, but not reactionary; his mind was open as well as active. If his plea for castration and whipping as generally applicable methods of punishing criminals savors of the archaic (Yale Law Journal, June 1899), he was capable also of starting nationwide comment, as on the radically new ideas embodied in his "The Natural Right to a Natural Death" (Journal of Social Science, 1889). In January 1910 he published "The Law of the Airship" (American Journal of International Law), and in November "Liability for Accidents in Aerial Navigation" (Michigan Law Review, IX, 20). At his suggestion the Connecticut legislature (1911) passed a law regulating the use of flying machines, the first law to be enacted on this subject. France shortly afterward modeled her law on that of Connecticut. In 1911 he had two articles on airship law in foreign journals (Revue de l'Institut de Droit Comparé and Zeitschrift für Völkerrecht und Bundesstaatsrecht). Notwithstanding his work in many fields, his real interest was always in modern law. He has been called an antiquarian, but his studies in this line did not go beyond colonial history, more particularly Connecticut history. Few men have played a more important part in so many activities that concerned their own community. When he was presented for the degree of LL. D. at the Yale Commencement in 1916 he was called, inter alia, "the first citizen of Connecticut." No designation could have fitted him better. ―George Edward Woodbine

He was the son of Roger Sherman Baldwin, brotherin law of Dwight Foster (1828–1884), uncle of Edward Baldwin Whitney, grandson of Simeon Baldwin, and the great grandson of Roger Sherman. On 19 October 1865 he married Susan Mears Winchester, daughter of Edmund Winchester and Harriet Mears. Simeon and Susan had three children: Florence, Roger and Helen. In 1873, Susan was admitted to a mental health institution after developing a mental disorder subsequent to the demise of their daughter Florence in 1872. Her sister Charlotte assisted in the upbringing of the two remaining children, Roger and Helen, and oversaw the household. He died January 30, 1927, in New Haven.