Willis Van Devanter

Willis Van Devanter (April 17, 1859 – February 8, 1941) was an American lawyer who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1911 to 1937. He was a staunch conservative and was regarded as a part of the Four Horsemen, the conservative bloc which dominated the Supreme Court during the 1930s. Early life Van Devanter was born in Marion, Indiana, to a family of Dutch Americans. He attended Indiana Asbury University (now DePauw University) from 1875 to 1878 before earning a Bachelor of Laws from the Cincinnati Law School in 1881. He was a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity and the Knights of Pythias. Legal, political and state judicial careers In 1884, Van Devanter moved to the Wyoming Territory where he became the city attorney of Cheyenne. He served on a commission to revise the statutes of Wyoming Territory in 1886, and as a member of the territorial legislature in 1888. He also served as an attorney to the Wyoming Stock Growers Association during the Johnson County War, managing to strain the local courts' (and county's) budget and delay trials while his clients and their allies worked to make key witnesses and the gunman unavailable, as well as securing favorable press coverage from the state's most influential papers while threatening to sue the Johnson County paper for slander. He served as chief justice of the Supreme Court of Wyoming from 1889 to 1890, then resumed his private law practice. The Union Pacific and other railroads were among his major clients.