Scope and Content Note
The papers of Willis Van Devanter (1859-1941) span the years 1884-1941, and consist of interspersed family and personal correspondence, bound volumes of records and briefs, a few speeches and lectures, and scrapbooks of newspaper clippings. The bulk of the collection is composed of letters sent and received by Van Devanter, including nearly sixty letterbooks of outgoing correspondence. Also in the papers is a substantial file of letters received. Additionally, a special correspondence file contains numerous personal letters from Van Devanter’s friend and patron, Wyoming Senator Francis E. Warren. Other topical material in the special correspondence consists chiefly of mail received by Van Devanter on his appointment and retirement from the Supreme Court of the United States. The collection is arranged in four series: Letterbooks, Personal Correspondence, Special Correspondence, and Miscellany.
Nominated by fellow Cincinnati Law School alumnus William H. Taft to the United States Supreme Court in 1910, Van Devanter’s legal expertise had been honed in the frontier environs of Cheyenne, Wyoming. During the 1920s, his abilities as a negotiator elicited the praise of Taft and other justices on the bench who appreciated his legal precision and courtroom thoroughness. In the 1930s, however, Van Devanter’s conservatism put him at odds with the New Deal programs of Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1937, he resigned his seat. By then he had spent approximately forty years in federal service, including six as assistant attorney general in the Department of Interior and seven more as a judge on the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Eighth District.
Main topics in the early portion of the papers, which begin with his move to Cheyenne from Marion, Indiana, feature legal developments in Wyoming during its territorial and early statehood period, Republican Party politics, and western land policy. Between 1884 and 1897, Van Devanter served as territorial legislator, city attorney of Cheyenne, chairman of the Republican State Committee, chief justice of the territorial supreme court of Wyoming, and a private lawyer whose practice included clients such as the Union Pacific Railroad. All of these aspects are touched on to a greater or lesser degree in the personal correspondence, especially in the letterpress copies of his outgoing mail. Van Devanter’s correspondence with Senator Warren is a most valuable file for this period through 1910, as the two maintained a long relationship exchanging ideas and information about a wide spectrum of political, legal, and economic developments. Besides Warren, other leading Wyoming politicians whose names appear in this collection are Joseph M. Carey, Clarence D. Clark, Frank W. Mondell, and William A. Richards. There is also a large amount of correspondence with newpaper editors and leaders of the Wyoming community interested in the advancement of their private and public interests and concerns.
Another major Wyoming correspondent, John W. Lacey, a law partner, had accompanied Van Devanter to Cheyenne in 1884 to become chief justice of the territorial supreme court. Lacey was married to Van Devanter’s sister, and he remained important in Wyoming legal and political circles long after his brother-in-law’s departure for Washington. The letters between them, like correspondence from other Van Devanter relatives, are interspersed throughout the letterbook series and the personal correspondence of mail received.
Beginning in 1896, Van Devanter sat for four years on the Republican National Committee. His work on behalf of William McKinley, for whom he traveled across the state on horseback in the campaign of 1896, plus his federal appointments prior to being named associate justice of the Supreme Court in 1910, are reflected in the correspondence kept from these years and after. Students of the judiciary will be particularly interested in the extensive communications between Van Devanter and other federal judges, especially those on the Eighth Circuit Court. Prominent among the jurists who confided in him are Elmer B. Adams, John C. Pollock, John A. Riner, and Walter R. Sanborn. Other major correspondents include several from the Department of Interior, where Van Devanter, as a specialist in public lands and Indian affairs, built on his already acquired knowledge of these fields. Some of the letter writers who stand out in the collection as a whole are Charles F. Amidon, A. C. Campbell, William C. Hook, Frank B. Kellogg, John F. Phillips, William V. Rooker, Luther M. Walter, and Sylvester G. Williams.
The Van Devanter Papers for his Supreme Court years, while not extensive in holdings relating directly to his duties on the bench, include a fair amount of correspondence between him and other justices. The most frequent writers were chief justices William H. Taft, Charles Evans Hughes, and Harlan Fiske Stone. Other correspondents include Louis Dembitz Brandeis, Pierce Butler, John H. Clark, William R. Day, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Edward Terry Sanford. Numerous justices exchanged social and personal pleasantries with Van Devanter, but most of their letters concern procedural matters. With the principal exception of the turn-of-the-century bound records and briefs, substantive case materials from the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and the Supreme Court are largely absent from these papers. As a whole, however, the correspondence in this collection contributes significantly to understanding Van Devanter’s social and legal connections, his handling of cases, and his views on the law and the Constitution.