Willis VanDevanter

Willis VanDevanter. . AEP-Indiana Michigan Power knows all about power and they have graciously helped CSA sponsor this electric personality from Marion who went on to become one of the most powerful people in America., Willis Van Devanter, the first Hoosier to serve as a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, got his first taste of the law just a half-block from here., Van Devanter, born and reared on the family farm north of Marion, near where Riverview Elementary School now stands, entered law practice in Marion with his father, Isaac Van Devanter, in a second-floor office in the "Spencer Block,” the Spencer Hotel, the very same building that how carries his name as the Willis Van Devanter Grant County office complex at Fourth and Adams streets, named in his honor in 2005., Born in 1859, he received his law degree from the Cincinnati Law School in 1881 and returned to Marion for three years. He then moved to the Wyoming Territory where he served as city attorney of Cheyenne, and a member of the territorial legislature. At the age of 30, he was appointed chief judge of the Wyoming territorial court and, after Wyoming was admitted as a state, he served briefly as Chief Justice of the Wyoming Supreme Court., He went to Washington, D.C., as an assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice and was named by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1903 to a seat on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. Seven years later, on December 12, 1910, President William Howard Taft nominated him to the Supreme Court of the United States. Van Devanter was confirmed by the United States Senate on December 15, 1910, and he served on the court for 26 years., As a senior member of the court, he was a central figure in the "court packing” political storm when President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to expand the court in 1937. He was known as one of the "Four Horsemen,” along with Justices Pierce Butler, James McReynolds and George Sutherland, who consistently stood in opposition to much of FDR's New Deal legislation during the Depression years., Justice Van Devanter retired on May 18, 1937, and was succeeded on the court by Justice Hugo Black., He died February 8, 1941, in Washington, D.C., and is buried there in Rock Creek Cemetery., CSA would like to thank AEP-Indiana Michigan Power for helping energize our community and help us share these powerful American stories of these iconic people who were all a part of Grant County history.