William Scoville Case was born on June 27, 1863 in Tariffville, Connecticut, United States. He was the son of William Cullen Case and Margaret (Turnbull) Case, and was a descendant in the eighth generation of John Case, who came to America from the southern part of England. William Cullen Case was for many years a lawyer of Connecticut, distinguished, among other things, for his oratorical ability and for his mastery of the art of cross-examination.
The fragmentary early education of William Scoville Case in the local schools was supplemented by extended reading. He entered Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven in 1877, was admitted to Yale University, and graduated with his class in 1885 after four happy and well-spent years, during which he had found opportunity for the expression of his literary gift as editor of the Yale Record. On leaving college he studied in his father's office until his admission to the bar in 1887.
Shortly after his marriage he wrote a novel, Forward House, which evinced imagination and unusual powers of description. In July 1897 he became judge of the court of common pleas in Hartford County, and entered upon a judicial career that was to end only with his death twenty-four years later. Promoted to the superior court in 1901, he served there most acceptably until August 1919. Possessed of a keen, discriminating, and cultured mind, he readily mastered legal principles, and by a sort of flashing intuition rather than by studied processes at least so it seemed he was able to select the one that pointed out the judgment to be rendered. But this instinctive method was never permitted to dictate finality in his conclusions, until their correctness had been verified by a course of reasoning, a test which his logical mind was abundantly able to supply. His memoranda of decisions and later his opinions in the supreme court had a felicity of style rarely equaled in law reports. He also had other means of expression, as many lifelike and clever caricatures of lawyers, witnesses, and jurors, imbedded in his evidence-books, testify; but they, unfortunately, were kept for the delectation of a few friends. A quiet dignity pervaded his court-room, and one was conscious of the firm but unobtrusive control which he exercised over its proceedings. Any deliberate violation of the proprieties met with quick rebuke, uttered occasionally in caustic and witty phrase which members of the bar delighted to recall. His varied gifts would have been certain to bring him ever greater distinction as a justice of the court of last resort, and his death before completing two years of work on that tribunal was deplored by bench and bar, and by a public he had served with conspicuous ability and fidelity.
On April 8, 1891, he married Elizabeth Nichols of Salem, Massachussets, daughter of Nathan and Elizabeth Rodman Nichols.
