Reports of Cases Decided in the Circuit and District Courts of the United States for the Ninth Circuit. 1870-1891: Embracing Cases at Law, Civil and ... on Appeal from the American Consular and
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Lorenzo Sawyer was an American lawyer and judge, served as the Chief Justice of California in Supreme Court of California.
Background
Lorenzo was born on May 23, 1820 in Leray, Jefferson County, New York, United States, the oldest child of Jesse and Elizabeth (Goodell) Sawyer. His first American ancestor was Thomas Sawyer, who emigrated from England to Massachusetts about 1636, settling in Rowley and in 1647 moving to Lancaster. His early life was spent upon his father's farm.
Education
Lorenzo attended the district school and Black River Institute at Watertown, New York. From Pennsylvania, whither his parents had moved, he went to Ohio and finished his schooling. Later he studied law in Columbus with Gustavus Swan and with Noah H. Swayne.
Career
For a time Sawyer taught Latin and mathematics at Central College, Ohio.
In 1846 he was admitted to the Ohio bar, but soon went to Chicago and passed a year in the law office of James A. McDougall, then attorney-general of Illinois and afterwards a United States senator from California.
Moving to Wisconsin, he formed a law-partnership with Lieut. -Gov. J. E. Holmes. In 1850 he crossed the plains with a company of young men from Wisconsin. Arriving in California, he first worked in the mines in El Dorado County, but soon entered upon the practice of law, first in Nevada City, then in Sacramento, and for a few months in 1851 in San Francisco, subsequently returning to Nevada City. In the autumn of 1853 he moved permanently to San Francisco, and the next year became city attorney. In his private practice he was retained in important cases involving alienation of homestead, mining, and water rights.
In 1861 he was in Washington, seeking appointment as chief justice of Colorado Territory, but friends persuaded him to return to California, where he began a long career on the bench the following year, when Governor Stanford appointed him judge of the district court of the twelfth judicial district. In 1863 he was elected to the state supreme court and for two years (1868 - 70) was its chief justice.
On December 8, 1869, President Grant nominated him as United States circuit judge for the ninth circuit, and on January 10, 1870, the nomination was confirmed. At the time of Sawyer's death in San Francisco in 1891, he was serving as presiding judge of the newly created circuit court of appeals for the ninth circuit.
As the first president of the board of trustees of Leland Stanford, Junior, University he delivered an address (1887) at the laying of the University's corner stone in Palo Alto.
He died in 1891 (aged 71) in San Francisco, California.
Achievements
Serving as the ninth Chief Justice of California and later the first judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Lorenzo Sawyer was called upon to decide important questions relating to the settlement and preservation of land titles. He handed down what became known as the Sawyer Decision in Woodruff v. North Bloomfield Mining and Gravel Company which abruptly ended hydraulic mining in Northern California's Gold Country. His best-known decision, however, was the habeas corpus case in 1889 (In re Neagle, 14 Sawyer's Reports).
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Politics
In politics Sawyer was firstly a Whig, then a member of the American Party, but throughout most of his life a Republican.
Personality
Though not a man of brilliancy or genius, Sawyer was richly endowed with common sense, and was temperate, regular, and rigidly correct in all his habits. No success came to him without hard work. He investigated cases with the greatest patience, and was ready to hear the uttermost word that could be offered in behalf of any cause. Stern and inflexible in his public acts and relations, he was of great gentleness, kindness, and simplicity in his private life.
Connections
On March 10, 1857, Sawyer married Jennie M. Aldrich. She died in 1876, leaving two sons and a daughter.