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Supreme
Court Justices
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Willis Van Devanter (1859-1941) |
 Willis
Van Devanter was born in Indiana on April 17, 1859. In 1881, he
graduated from the law school of the University of Cincinnati, and
returned to his hometown to practice law with his father. After several
years there, Van Devanter moved to the mountain west, to Cheyenne,
Wyoming. Van Devanter was a member of the Wyoming Territory legislature,
and was also a member of the Territory's Supreme Court. Van Devanter
returned to private practice in 1890, and worked for railroads, among
other clients. In 1897, he worked as an attorney at the Department of
the Interior. President Teddy Roosevelt appointed him to the United
States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in 1903, and in 1910, Van
Devanter was nominated to take the seat of Associate Justice
Edward
D. White, who replaced the deceased
Melville Fuller as Chief Justice. Van Devanter was firmly opposed to
increased governmental regulation of the economy. He interpreted the
interstate commerce clause narrowly, thus limiting Congress's ability to
regulate issues such as child labor or the use of yellow dog provisions
in employment contracts. Additionally, Van Devanter favored an expansive
interpretation of the due process clause of the 14th amendment, which
thus restricted the ability of states to regulate the maximum hours of
work, and made impermissible the creation of a minimum wage. By the
mid-1930s, Van Devanter, along with Justices
James McReynolds,
Pierce
Butler, and
George Sutherland, were perceived as obstacles to FDR's New Deal.
When joined by Justice
Owen
Roberts, a majority existed to declare unconstitutional New Deal
legislation. When FDR announced his court reorganization plan on
February 5, 1937, his announced reason for adding up to six members to
the Court (1 for each Justice over the age of 70 who had failed to
retire or resign by then, up to a maximum of 6 justices) was that the
Court was behind on its work. On March 21, shortly before the Court
announced decisions that indicated a "switch" in their interpretation of
the Constitution, the Court's Chief Justice,
Charles Evans Hughes, sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary
Committee signed by himself and Justices Van Devanter and
Brandeis indicating that the Court was not behind in its work. In
mid-May, after the Court had clearly altered course, Justice Van
Devanter announced his retirement, which he had apparently put off until
he was pensioned off by Congress. He retired on June 2, 1937.Van Devanter did not write many opinions, and it has been suggested that he suffered from writer's block. His influence was in his knowledge of much arcane federal law, which was tapped by other Justices in cases before the Court. Van Devanter died on February 8, 1941.
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