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.

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.

That the studious traits which he later manifested were not altogether lacking at this time may be inferred from the fact that he was elected a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Skull & Bones.

Such records as we have do not indicate that there was anything unusual about this young student who had among his classroom contemporaries the poet Edward Rowland Sill, and two others who like himself were later to have much to do with the life of the university, his friends Tracy Peck and Franklin Bowditch Dexter.

In the practice of the law he won distinction both in his own state and outside, and with it the financial emoluments that usually accompany success at the bar.

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).

[2] For twelve years (1907–1919) he was the director of the American Bar Association's Comparative Law Bureau (as well as its Annual Bulletin's editor for general jurisprudence).

He increased the size of the faculty, instituted new courses, developed graduate work, and for a long time carried much of the financial responsibility for the school's existence (Yale Law Journal, March 1927, p. 680).

Never a politician, and to the end of his days allowing such honors and offices as came to him to come unsought and unfought for, he nevertheless early became identified with the political life of his state.

Caught in a Republican landslide and defeated by incumbent Senator Frank B. Brandegee, he nevertheless ran ahead of his party ticket by several thousand votes.

Six years later he was named by the governor of Connecticut acting under a resolution of the state legislature one of a commission of five to inquire into the feasibility of simplifying legal procedure.

This commission drew up a set of rules and forms which were approved and adopted by the court as the basis of pleading in civil cases.

But his participation in state affairs was not merely political and legal; he was also actively associated with charitable and religious organizations.

His connections with national and international matters touching law and its ramifications were not restricted to membership in learned societies.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

His legal bibliography, fairly complete through 1901, was printed in Yale Law Journal, November 1901, pp. 14–16.