Willis Van Devanter
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| Born | April 17, 1859 Marion, Indiana<tr><th>Died</th><td>February 8, 1941 Washington, D.C.</td></tr> |
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Willis Van Devanter (April 17, 1859 - February 8, 1941) was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, January 3, 1911 to June 2, 1937.
Born in Marion, Indiana, he graduated from the Cincinnati Law School in 1881. After three years private practice in Marion, he moved to the Wyoming Territory where he served as city attorney of Cheyenne, Wyoming, a member of the territorial legislature, as chief judge of the territorial court. Upon statehood, he again took up private practice including much work for the Union Pacific and other railroads. In 1903, Theodore Roosevelt appointed him to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, and William Howard Taft elevated him to the Supreme Court in 1910, where he served until 1937.
On the court, he made his mark in opinions on public lands, Indian questions, water rights, admiralty, jurisdiction, and corporate law, but is best remembered for his opinions defending limited government in the 1920s and 1930s. He voted against the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (United States v. Butler), the National Recovery Administration (Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States), federal regulation of labor relations (National Labor Relations Board v. Jones and Laughlin Steel Corp.), the Railway Pension Act (Railroad Retirement Board v. Alton Railroad), unemployment insurance (Steward Machine Co. v. Davis), and the minimum wage (West Coast Hotel v. Parrish). For his conservatism, he, along with Pierce Butler, James Clark McReynolds, and George Sutherland was known as one of the Four Horsemen.
Van Devanter did not write quickly and, as a result, was assigned fewer opinions of the court than many of the other justices. However, he was widely respected as an expert on judicial procedure. He was largely responsible for the 1925 legislation that allowed the Supreme Court greater control over its own docket through the certiorari procedure.
Van Devanter resigned as a Supreme Court Justice after Congress voted full pay for justices over seventy who retired. Van Devanter was replaced by Justice Hugo Black, appointed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
He died in Washington, D.C. and was buried there in Rock Creek Cemetery.
Van Devanter's personal and judicial papers are archived at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, where they are available for research.
| Preceded by: New seat | Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit 1903-1910 | Succeeded by: Walter Inglewood Smith |
| Preceded by: Edward Douglass White | Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States January 3, 1911 – June 2, 1937 | Succeeded by: Hugo Black |
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