John Patrick Devaney was born on June 30, 1883, in Lake Mills, Iowa, to Patrick and Ellen (La Velle) Devaney. His father, a farmer and mechanic who had come to the United States from Ireland in 1842, was a Confederate veteran of the Civil War.
John attended the public schools of Lake Mills and the University of Minnesota, where he received an A. B. in 1905 and, after going on to the law school, the degrees of Bachelor of Laws (1907) and Master of Laws (1908).
Specializing in common carrier law, John Devaney became well known for his effective courtroom presentations. Much of his reputation stemmed from his successful advocacy of the damage claims of a group of northern Minnesota homesteaders whose farms had been destroyed by a forest fire in 1917. In August 1933 Olson appointed Devaney chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court to fill an unexpired term; the following year he was elected to a six-year term by a substantial majority. On the bench Devaney's tendency was to champion the individual against the larger economic interests, and he became known as a liberal jurist.
In Nelson v. McKenzie Hague Company (1934) he dissented vigorously from a ruling which held that a construction firm under contract with the state was immune from private damage suits under the Minnesota private nuisance statute. In Romain v. Twin City Fire Insurance Company (1934) and in Thompson v. Prudential Life Insurance Company of America (1936) he rejected the claims of insurance companies trying to avoid payment to individuals on technical grounds. His concern for the individual extended less frequently to claims made against the state. In one of his more significant rulings, Anderson v. Ueland (1936), he denied the suit of a gardener for benefits under the Minnesota Workman's Compensation Act on the grounds that the act excluded domestic servants and that the gardener was involved in the maintenance of a private home. Devaney's opinions also revealed concern over the rising rate of crime, as in Vos v. Albany Mutual Fire Insurance Company (1934), where he spoke out strongly against the threat of organized crime and denied the benefits of an insurance policy to a small "still" operator.
Devaney resigned as chief justice on February 15, 1937, in order to take part in the formation of the National Lawyers Guild, of which he was chosen the first president. The Guild's purpose, as he explained it in the first issue of its Quarterly, was to create "a liberal alternative" to the American Bar Association. Devaney soon took an active part in the Guild's campaign in support of President Roosevelt's court reorganization or "court-packing" bill. Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he offered a legal-realist critique of the Hughes Supreme Court, accusing it of fostering and hiding behind the "dangerous myth" of judicial impersonality. Shortly thereafter his name was rumored as a possible candidate for the Court. After serving a one-year term as Guild president, and for a brief period as chairman of the Industry Committee of the Wages and Hours Division of the Department of Labor, Devaney returned to his Minneapolis law practice.
He was also appointed by Roosevelt to several emergency boards to settle labor disputes in the Northwest, one of which, in 1940, averted a strike of the 30, 000 employees of the Railway Express Agency. On September 14, 1941, Devaney declared his candidacy for the United States Senate, but one week later, while conferring on party matters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he suffered a stroke and died there.
John Devaney is best remembered as chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, serving from 1933 to 1937. During his tenure as chief justice, Devaney headed the Minnesota Crime Commission of 1934, which offered thirty-five suggestions for revising the state's criminal code, twenty-five of which were later enacted. Some were aimed at speeding cases through the courts, others toward more effective prosecution of crime; one, for example, advised that the judge or prosecutor be allowed to note a defendant's refusal to testify.
John Devaney was a man of magnetic personality, a quick and alert mind, driving power, and unbounded energy.
Devaney married Beatrice Langevin on February 20, 1919. They had three children: Patrick, Beatrice, and Sheila.
