One of the most famous critics of John Stuart Mill, Stephen achieved prominence as a philosopher, law reformer, and writer.

His father, the drafter of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, was Permanent Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies and Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge.

Strongly disliking Eton, Stephen completed his pre-university education by attending King's College, London for two years.

He was also elected to the exclusive Cambridge Apostles, his proposer being Henry Maine, the newly appointed Regius Professor of Civil Law, who became a lifelong friend despite their differing temperaments.

At Apostles meetings, he frequently sparred with William Harcourt, later leader of the Liberal Party, in debates described by contemporaries as "veritable battles of the gods".

Both the first and the last books published by Stephen were selections from his papers in the Saturday Review (Essays by a Barrister, 1862, anonymous; Horae sabbaticae, 1892).

In 1861–62, he unsuccessfully defended the Reverend Rowland Williams in the Court of Arches against charges of heresy, though he was ultimately acquitted in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.

In early 1867, Stephen was retained by the Jamaica Committee to prosecute Alexander Abercromby Nelson and Herbert Brand, two military officers who had sat on the court martial which sentenced George William Gordon to death; but the grand jury declined to return a true bill.

Stephen was a critic of Mill's "sentimental liberalism", arguing that the British government was justified in applying force to prevent subject societies from descending into anarchy.

The decisive point of Stephen's career was in the summer of 1869, when he accepted the post of legal member of the Viceroy's Executive Council in India.

Guided by Maine's comprehensive talents, the government of India had entered a period of systematic legislation which was to last about twenty years.

The Indian Contract Act had been framed in England by a learned commission, and the draft was materially altered in Stephen's hands before, also in 1872, it became law.

Besides drafting legislation, at this time Stephen had to attend to the current administrative business of his department, and he took a full share in the general deliberations of the viceroy's council.

During the voyage he wrote a series of articles which resulted in his book Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (1873–1874)--a protest against John Stuart Mill's neo-utilitarianism.

[6] This showed in Stephen's famous attack on the thesis of John Stuart Mill's essay On Liberty, arguing for legal compulsion, coercion and restraint in the interests of morality and religion.

The government of India had been driven by the conditions of the Indian judicial system to recast a considerable part of the English law which had been informally imported.

He completed his draft in early 1878 and it was debated in Parliament, after which it was referred to a Royal Commission under the chairmanship of Lord Blackburn, with Stephen as a member.

Occupied with the preparation of the criminal code, he only made his first appearance as a judge in April 1879 at the Old Bailey, when he passed a death sentence against a matricide.

Distracted by his literary and intellectual pursuits, his time as a judge was unimpressive relative to the rest of his career, though his judgments were of a high quality.

He had transient hopes of an Evidence Act being brought before Parliament, and in 1878 the Digest of Criminal Law became a Ministerial Bill with the cooperation of Sir John Holker, who was Attorney-General in the second government of Benjamin Disraeli.

It dealt with procedure as well as substantive law, and provided for a court of criminal appeal, though after several years of judicial experience Stephen changed his mind as to the wisdom of this course.

Despite accusations of unfairness and bias regarding the murder trials of Israel Lipski in 1887 and Florence Maybrick in 1889, Stephen continued performing his judicial duties.

However, by early 1891 his declining capacity to exercise judicial functions had become a matter of public discussion and press comment, and following medical advice Stephen resigned in April of that year, whereupon he was made a baronet.

[9] Stephen died of chronic renal failure on 11 March 1894 at Red House Park, a nursing home near Ipswich, and was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery, London.

He was created a Baronet, of De Vere Gardens in the parish of Saint Mary Abbott, Kensington, in the County of London, on 29 June 1891, shortly after his resignation from the bench.