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WILLIS VAN
DEVANTER was born on April 17, 1859, in Marion, Indiana.
He received a law degree from the University of Cincinnati
Law School in 1881 and joined his father’s law firm
in Marion. Three years later, Van Devanter moved to Cheyenne,
Wyoming Territory, and established his own practice. Van
Devanter served as a member of the commission that revised
the statutes of the Wyoming Territory in 1886. In 1887,
he served as City Attorney of Cheyenne, and in the following
year he was elected to the Territorial Legislature. Van
Devanter was only thirty years old when, in 1889, President
Benjamin Harrison appointed him Chief Justice of the Wyoming
Territorial Supreme Court. After Wyoming was admitted
to the Union as the forty-fourth State in 1890, Van Devanter
resigned as Chief Justice and returned to private practice.
In 1897, President William McKinley appointed him an Assistant
Attorney General, assigned to the Interior Department.
President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him to the United
States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in 1903.
President William H. Taft nominated Van Devanter to the
Supreme Court of the United States on December 12, 1910.
The Senate confirmed the appointment three days later.
Van Devanter served on the Supreme Court for twenty-six
years. He retired on June 2, 1937, and died on February
8, 1941, at the age of eighty-one. |
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