Samuel D. Warren II

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Samuel D. Warren II
Portrait by William Notman, circa 1875
Born
Samuel Dennis Warren II

(1852-01-25)January 25, 1852
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
DiedFebruary 18, 1910(1910-02-18) (aged 58)
Dedham, Massachusetts, U.S.
Burial placeMount Auburn Cemetery
EducationHarvard University
(AB, LLB, AM)
Occupations
  • Lawyer
  • businessman
Spouse
Mabel Bayard
​
(m. 1883)​
Children6
Parent

Samuel Dennis Warren II (January 25, 1852 – February 18, 1910) was an American lawyer and businessman from Boston, Massachusetts.

Early life and family[edit]

Childhood and education[edit]

Warren was born in Boston on January 25, 1852, the son of Susan Cornelia (née Clarke; 1825–1901) and Samuel Dennis Warren (1817–1888).[1][2] His father and namesake founded the Cumberland Paper Mills in Maine. He had four siblings: Henry Clarke Warren (1854–1899), scholar of Sanskrit and Pali; Cornelia Lyman Warren (1857–1921), philanthropist; Edward Perry Warren (1860–1928), art collector; and Fredrick Fiske Warren (1862–1938), political radical and utopist.[3]

Warren graduated from the Boston Latin School, after which he entered Harvard College, earning his undergraduate degree in 1875.[1][4] He graduated second in his class at Harvard Law School in 1877. The first-place student was his friend Louis Brandeis, later a justice of the United States Supreme Court. Warren was editor of The Harvard Crimson.[5]

Marriage[edit]

Warren married Mabel Bayard, the eldest daughter of United States Senator from Delaware Thomas F. Bayard, at the Church of the Ascension in Washington, D.C., on January 25, 1883.[6][7] The couple went on to have six children.[4]

Career[edit]

Warren and Brandeis founded the prominent Boston law firm of Nutter McClennen & Fish in 1879. At the end of 1890 they published their famous law review article "The Right to Privacy" in the Harvard Law Review.[8] It is "one of the most influential essays in the history of American law"[9] and is widely regarded as the first publication in the United States to advocate a right to privacy,[10] articulating that right primarily as a "right to be let alone" which referred to paragraph 11 of the 1868 law of the press of France.[8] Brandeis later acknowledged that the idea for the essay originated with Warren's "deep-seated abhorrance of the invasions of social privacy" on the part of the press.[11]

In 1899, he left law to oversee the family's paper production business. He managed the family trust established in May 1889 with the legal assistance of Brandeis to benefit his father's widow and 5 children. In 1906, Warren's brothers Edward and Fiske charged that Brandeis had structured the trust to benefit Samuel at the expense of his siblings.[12][13]

Warren served from 1902 to 1906 as president of the trustees of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.[3]

Death and aftermath[edit]

Warren committed suicide by firearm at his Dedham, Massachusetts, country home on the night of February 18, 1910, putting to an end the dispute over the family trust. His family disguised his suicide and the date of his death.[14] The New York Times reported that he died of apoplexy on February 20.[4] Following a funeral service at his Boston residence, he was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery on February 23.[15]

The Warren Trust case became a point of contention during the 1916 Senate hearings on the confirmation of Brandeis to the Supreme Court, and it remains important for its explication of legal ethics and professional responsibility.[16]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b "Death Comes to Samuel D. Warren". The Boston Globe. February 21, 1910. p. 7. Retrieved May 17, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  2. ^ "Samuel D. Warren Dead". Boston Evening Transcript. February 21, 1910. p. 2. Retrieved May 17, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. ^ a b Green, Martin Burgess (1989). The Mount Vernon Street Warrens: A Boston Story, 1860–1910. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Retrieved January 4, 2018 – via Internet Archive. Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
  4. ^ a b c "Samuel D. Warren Dead". The New York Times. February 21, 1910. Retrieved October 28, 2011.
  5. ^ "Former Crimson Editors". The Harvard Crimson. May 1, 1908. Retrieved March 24, 2017.
  6. ^ "Society Notes". The Evening Star. January 26, 1883. p. 1. Retrieved May 17, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. ^ "Marriage of Senator Bayard's Daughter". The New York Times. January 26, 1883. p. 1. Retrieved May 17, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. ^ a b Warren, Samuel D.; Brandeis, Louis D. (December 15, 1890). "The Right to Privacy". Harvard Law Review. IV (5): 193–220. Retrieved June 4, 2021 – via Internet Archive.
  9. ^ Gallagher, Susan E. "Introduction". "The Right to Privacy" by Louis D. Brandeis and Samuel Warren: A Digital Critical Edition. University of Massachusetts Press.
  10. ^ See, e.g., Dorothy J. Glancy, "The Invention of the Right to Privacy" Archived July 22, 2010, at the Wayback Machine, Arizona Law Review, v.21, n.1, pp. 1–39 (1979), p. 1 ("The right to privacy is, as a legal concept, a fairly recent invention. It dates back to a law review article published in December of 1890 by two young Boston lawyers, Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis.").
  11. ^ Amy Gajda, What If Samuel D. Warren Hadn’t Married A Senator’s Daughter?: Uncovering The Press Coverage That Led To "The Right to Privacy", November 1, 2007, p. 7, passim. His antipathy toward the press, she argues, derived from press coverage of his wife's family.
  12. ^ Lane, Frederick S. (2009). American Privacy: The 400-year History of Our Most Contested Right. Beacon Press. ISBN 9780807044414. Retrieved March 26, 2017.
  13. ^ Kennedy, Mopsy Strange (June 3, 1990). "Brawling Brahmins". The New York Times. Retrieved March 26, 2017.
  14. ^ Green. The Mount Vernon Street Warrens. pp. 3ff.
  15. ^ "Funeral of S. D. Warren". Boston Evening Transcript. February 23, 1910. p. 6. Retrieved May 17, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  16. ^ "Sum Up the Case Against Brandeis" (PDF). The New York Times. March 29, 1916. Retrieved March 23, 2017.

External links[edit]

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Samuel D. Warren
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