Everything about John W Davis totally explained
John William Davis (
April 13 1873–
March 24 1955) was an
American politician, diplomat and lawyer. He served as an
United States Representative from
West Virginia (1911-1913), then as
Solicitor General of the United States and
U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain under President
Woodrow Wilson. Over a 60-year legal career, he argued 140 cases before the
U.S. Supreme Court.
Davis is best known as the
Democratic Party nominee for
President of the United States during the
1924 presidential election, losing to
Republican incumbent
Calvin Coolidge.
Family and early life
Family background
His great-grandfather,
Caleb Davis, was a clockmaker in the Shenandoah Valley. In 1816, his grandfather,
John Davis, moved to
Clarksburg in what would later become
West Virginia, which had a population of six or seven hundred at the time, and ran a saddle and harness business. His father,
John James Davis attended
Lexington Law School, which later became the
Washington and Lee School of Law, and by the age of twenty, had established a law practice in Clarksburg. John J. Davis was a delegate in the Virginia General Assembly, and after the northwestern portion of Virginia broke away from the rest of
Virginia in 1863 and formed West Virginia, he was elected to their House of Delegates and later as their representative to the
United States House of Representatives.
Early years
Davis' Sunday School Teacher recalled "John W. Davis had a noble face even when small." His biographer went on to say that
Education
Davis' education began at home, as his mother taught him to read before he'd even memorized the alphabet. She then had him reading poetry and other literature throughout the home library. After he turned ten, he was put in a class to prepare him for the state teachers examination, with older students and a few years later he was enrolled in a previously all-female seminary that doubled as a private boarding and day school. There he received nothing less than a 94 for grades.
Davis started college at the age of sixteen, and graduated from Washington & Lee's Literary Department in 1892 with a major in Latin. He joined the
Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, participated in intramural sports, and "took calico" by attending mixed parties.
He would have started law school directly after graduation, but for a lack of funds. Instead, he became a school teacher for
Major Edward H McDonald of
Charles Town, West Virginia. Davis was put to teaching McDonald's nine children, and his six nieces and nephews, one of whom,
Julia Mcdonald, nineteen at the time, would become the future Mrs. John W. Davis. Davis fulfilled a nine-month contract with McDonald, but then returned home to Clarksburg and apprenticed at his father's law practice, where for fourteen months he copied documents by hand, read cases, and did much of what other aspiring lawyers did at the time.
He graduated with a law degree from
Washington and Lee University in 1895, and was elected Law Class Orator. His speech gave a glimpse of his advocacy skills:
Washington & Lee Legacy
Washington & Lee Law School has shown great pride in Davis. In 1947 W&L University began awarding the John W. Davis Prize to the graduating law student with the highest GPA. The law school has also named their intramural Moot Court Competition after Davis.
Early legal career
After graduating law school, Davis obtained the three signatures necessary to receive a law license, and joined his father in practice in Clarksburg, in what was called Davis and Davis, Attorneys at Law. Davis lost his first three cases before his fortunes began to turn. Before Davis had completed his first year of private practice, he was asked to come back to Washington & Lee Law School as an assistant professor, starting in the fall of 1896. At the time, the law school had a faculty of two, and Davis became the third. At the end of the year, Davis was asked to return but demurred. He decided that he needed the "rough & tumble" of private practice.
Family connections
Davis was the uncle and adoptive father of
Jimmy Carter's
Secretary of State Cyrus Vance.
Political and diplomatic career
His father helped create the state as a delegate to the
Wheeling Convention but supported slavery and opposed ratification of the
15th Amendment. Davis acquired much of his father's conservative politics, opposing
women's suffrage,
federal child-labor laws, anti-
lynching legislation and
Harry S. Truman's civil rights program while privately defending the
poll tax by questioning whether
African-Americans should be allowed to vote. He also maintained his father's staunch allegiance to the
Democratic Party, even as he later represented the interests of conservative business interests opposed to the
New Deal. Davis ranked as one of the last
Jeffersonians; supporting states rights and opposing a strong executive (he would be the lead attorney against Truman's nationalization of the steel industry).
He represented West Virginia in the
U.S. House of Representatives from 1911 to 1913, where he was one of the authors of the
Clayton Act. Davis also served as one of the managers in the successful
impeachment trial of Judge
Robert W. Archbald. He served as
U.S. Solicitor General from 1913 to 1918 and as
ambassador to the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 1918 to 1921. As Solicitor General he successfully argued for the illegality of Oklahoma's "grandfather law", which effectively disenfranchised most black citizens of Oklahoma by exempting white residents descended from a voter who had been registered in 1866 from the literacy requirements of its electoral law, in
Guinn v. United States. Davis's personal posture differed from his position as an advocate. Throughout his career, he could separate his personal views and professional advocacy.
Davis was a
dark horse candidate for the Democratic nomination for President in both 1920 and 1924. His friend and partner
Frank Polk managed the 1924 Democratic presidential convention campaign.
He won the nomination in 1924 as a compromise candidate on the one hundred and third ballot. His denunciation of the
Ku Klux Klan and his prior defense of black voting rights as Solicitor General under
Wilson cost him votes in the
South and among conservative Democrats elsewhere. He lost in a landslide to
Calvin Coolidge, who didn't leave his house to campaign.
Davis was a member of the National Advisory Council of the Crusaders, an influential organization that promoted the
repeal of prohibition. He was the founding President of the
Council on Foreign Relations, formed in 1921, and a trustee of the
Rockefeller Foundation from 1922 to 1939.
Legal career
Davis was one of the most prominent and successful lawyers of the first half of the twentieth century, arguing 140 cases before the
U.S. Supreme Court. His firm, variously titled Stetson Jennings Russell & Davis, then Davis Polk Wardwell Gardiner & Reed then Davis Polk Wardwell Sunderland & Kiendl (now
Davis Polk & Wardwell), represented many of the largest companies in the United States in the 1920s and following decades.
The last twenty years of Davis's practice included representing large corporations before the United States Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality and application of New Deal legislation. Davis lost many of these battles. His legal career is most remembered for his final appearance before the Supreme Court, in which he unsuccessfully defended the "
separate but equal" doctrine in
Briggs v. Elliott, a companion case to
Brown v. Board of Education. Davis, as an advocate to the defense of racial segregation, uncharacteristically displayed his emotions in arguing that
South Carolina had shown good faith in attempting to eliminate any inequality between black and white schools and should be allowed to continue to do so without judicial intervention. He expected to win, most likely through a divided Supreme Court, even after the matter was reargued after the death of
Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson. He declined the fee that South Carolina offered him after the Court ruled against it unanimously.
Appearances before the U.S. Supreme Court
Davis argued 140 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court during his career. Some of these were as Solicitor General, but more were as a private lawyer. It is believed that he's argued more Supreme Court cases than any other 20th century lawyer.
Daniel Webster and
Walter Jones are believed to have argued more cases than Davis, but they were lawyers of a much earlier era.
Youngstown Steel Case
One of Davis' most influential arguments before the Supreme Court was in the
Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer case in May of 1952. Arguing for the Steel industry, in protest of Truman's seizure of the nation's steel plants, Davis orated for eighty-seven minutes before the Court. He stated that Truman's acts were an "'usurpation' of power, that were "without parallel in American history." The justices of the court allowed him to proceed uninterrupted for nearly an hour and a half, with only one question arising from Justice Frankfurter, who may have had a personal feeling against Davis relating to his 1924 presidential campaign. It had been predicted that the President's actions would be upheld, and the injunction would be lifted, but the court decided the case 6-3, upholding the injunction stopping the seizure of the steel mills.
While Davis wasn't brought into the Youngstown case until March of 1952, he was already familiar with the concept of a presidential seizure of a steel mill.In 1949, the
Republic Steel Company, fearful of advice given to President Truman by Attorney General
Tom C. Clark, retained Davis' service for an opinion letter on whether the president could seize private industry amidst a "National Emergency." Davis' opinion was that the president couldn't do so, unless such power already were vested in the president.He further went on to opine on the Selective Service Act of 1948's intent, and that seizures were only authorized if a company didn't sufficiently prioritize government production in a time of crisis. Washington Post writer Chalmers Roberts subsequently wrote that rarely "has a courtroom sat in such silent admiration for a lawyer at the bar" in reference to Davis' oral argument. Unfortunately, Davis didn't allow the oral argument to be printed because the stenographic transcript was so garbled he feared it wouldn't be close to what was said at the Court.
Of particular note in the case is that Tom Clark, former attorney general who had advised Truman about the seizure of Republic Steel in 1949, had been nominated and confirmed to the US Supreme Court shortly after giving such advice. Yet in 1952, Justice Clark cast his vote with the majority, even though he didn't concur in the opinion. In this, he voted against the President's power to seize steel factories, seemingly in direct opposition to his previously given advice.
Electoral history
West Virginia's 1st congressional district, 1910:
West Virginia's 1st congressional district, 1912:
John W. Davis (D) (inc.) - 24,777 (44.97%)
George A. Laughlin (R) - 24,613 (44.67%)
D. M. S. Scott (Socialist) - 4,230 (7.68%)
L. E. Peters (Prohibition) - 1,482 (2.69%)
1924 Democratic presidential primaries
William McAdoo - 562,601 (56.05%)
Oscar W. Underwood - 77,583 (7.73%)
James M. Cox - 74,183 (7.39%)
Unpledged - 59,217 (5.90%)
Henry Ford - 49,737 (4.96%)
Thomas J. Walsch - 43,108 (4.30%)
Woodbridge Nathan Ferris - 42,028 (4.19%)
George Silzer - 35,601 (3.55%)
Al Smith - 16,459 (1.64%)
L. B. Musgrove - 12,110 (1.21%)
William Dever - 1,574 (0.16%)
James A. Reed - 84 (0.01%)
John W. Davis - 21 (0.00%)
United States presidential election, 1924
Calvin Coolidge/Charles G. Dawes (R) - 15,723,789 (54.0%) and 382 electoral votes (35 states carried)
John W. Davis/Charles W. Bryan (D) - 8,386,242 (28.8%) and 136 electoral votes (12 states carried)
Robert M. La Follette, Sr./Burton K. Wheeler (Progressive) - 4,831,706 (16.6%) and 13 electoral votes (1 state carried)
Further Information
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