“In all the New Deal test cases, Justice Willis Van Devanter (1859 – 1941) is not quite the arch-conservative of the Court. He has upheld one small piece of the New Deal, the right the Tennessee Valley Authority to sell Wilson Dam power. In that case he joined his best friend, Pierce Butler, and British-born George Sutherland in voting in favor of the Roosevelt administration for the first time. Of all the conservative justices, Van Devanter is perhaps the most esteemed. When Washington columnist Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen wrote their questionably accurate and somewhat malicious book, The Nine Old Men (1936), they were forced to fall in with the common agreement that Van Devanter ‘is one of the ablest members of the Court and one of its hardest workers.'”
FDR's thoughts concerning Justice Willis Van Devanter 1937Justice Willis Van Devanter profile in Pathfinder Magazine 1937Justice Willis Van Devanter and the FDR Supreme Court scheme 1937
FDR's thoughts concerning Justice Willis Van Devanter 1937Justice Willis Van Devanter profile in Pathfinder Magazine 1937Justice Willis Van Devanter and the FDR Supreme Court scheme 1937