Willis Van Devanter was an American jurist. History remembers him as one of the Four Horsemen, the quartet of conservative justices on the Supreme Court who consistently defied the New Deal program of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his Democratic Congress in the 1930s.
Background
Mr. Van Devanter was born in Marion, Indiana, United States, on April 17, 1859, the first of eight children born to Isaac Van Devanter and Violetta Spencer Van Devanter. His father was a lawyer who encouraged his eldest son to pursue the same calling.
Education
After attending schools in Marion, Willis Van Devanter enrolled at Indiana Asbury University (later to become DePauw University) but had to interrupt his studies after two years to earn a livelihood when his father became ill. Upon his father’s recovery, Willis Van Devanter was able to resume his academic career by enrolling in the University of Cincinnati Law School in 1879, from which he graduated second in his class receiving Bachelor of Laws degree in 1881.
Van Devanter joined his father’s law practice in the firm of Lacey and Van Devanter in 1881; but when Isaac Van Devanter retired in 1884, his partner John W. Lacey moved to Wyoming, where he accepted an appointment as chief justice of the Wyoming Territorial Supreme Court. Willis Van Devanter followed John Lacey to Wyoming and set up his own practice in Cheyenne. Twenty-five years old at the time, the rough and tumble of frontier life suited him more than the settled possibilities available to him in Indiana. He was the kind of man who would one day hunt grizzly bears with Buffalo Bill in the Bighorn Mountains. For the time being, though, he spent his first few years in Cheyenne finding clients among ranchers and others who feuded over cattle and land rights. In 1887 he formed a partnership with the influential Republican lawyer Charles N. Potter, and the two men’s practice soon boasted a client list that included the Burlington Railroad.
Around the same time, Mr. Van Devanter threw himself into Republican politics, casting his lot in support of the territorial governor, Francis E. Warren, and winning election himself as Cheyenne city attorney in 1887 and to the Wyoming territorial legislature in 1888.
During these years he worked on a commission to revise and codify the territorial statutes of Wyoming. The climax of this early period was his appointment in 1889 - at the age of 30 - by President Benjamin Harrison as chief justice of the Wyoming Territorial Supreme Court. The appointment, which paid only $3,000 a year, enhanced Willis Van Devanter’s reputation more than his bank account, and the young man returned to the more financially rewarding practice of law a year later, when Wyoming became a state. By this time John W. Lacey had also returned to the private practice of law, and the two men formed a new partnership whose core client was the Union Pacific Railroad. The newly formed state of Wyoming acknowledged the growing reputation of Mr. Van Devanter when it retained him to argue a case on its behalf before the U.S. Supreme Court. Ward v. Race Horse (1896) involved the question of whether Wyoming’s statehood superseded an Indian treaty that was inconsistent with state law on the question of Indian hunting rights. Mr. Van Devanter prevailed for the state in his appeal to the Supreme Court.
Willis Van Devanter’s efforts on behalf of the Republican party bore fruit once President William P. McKinley took office. Mr. McKinley appointed him an assistant attorney general in the Department of the Interior in 1897, where Van Devanter’s knowledge of land law and his familiarity with Native American issues served him in good stead. This position was less than Willis Van Devanter - who aspired to be solicitor general of the United States - might have hoped for, but it was followed in six years by a more prestigious appointment in 1903, when President Theodore Roosevelt nominated Mr. Van Devanter to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Here, over the course of seven years, Van Devanter reinforced his already substantial expertise in legal issues relating to land claims and railroads. He also proved adept at resolving complicated issues relating to jurisdiction.
The judge from Wyoming secured his final and most prestigious advancement in public service when President William Howard Taft appointed him an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court on December 12, 1910. Confirmed by the Senate a few days later, Van Devanter took his seat on the Court on January 3, 1911, inaugurating what would eventually be a term of service that stretched for more titan a quarter of a century.
By the summer of 1937, President Roosevelt had signed into law bills that provided an attractive retirement package for justices over the age at 70 who had served at least 10 years on the Court. Justice Van Devanter promptly took advantage of this law and tendered his resignation from the Court on June 2, 1937, when he was 78 years old. He moved to New York and handled cases for the lower federal courts there.
On the court, Willis Van Devanter 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 served for over twenty-five years, and voted against the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, the National Recovery Administration, federal regulation of labor relations, the Railway Pension Act, unemployment insurance, and the minimum wage. For his conservatism, he was known as one of the Four Horsemen, along with Pierce Butler, James Clark McReynolds, and George Sutherland; the four would dominate the Supreme Court for over two decades. He was anti-Semitic but less openly so than Mr. McReynolds, who refused to interact with or speak to eventual Jewish Supreme Court Justices Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter; Van Devanter's interactions with them were non-fractious.
Connections
In 1883 Van Devanter married Delice Burhan, with whom he would have two sons.