Willis Van Devanter: Chancellor of the Taft Court

Abstract

Although William H. Taft was president for only four years, he appointed a remarkable five justices to the Supreme Court. But only two of these appointments remained on the Court when Taft became chief justice– Mahlon Pitney and Willis Van Devanter. Pitney would be gone within eighteen months, but Van Devanter would remain as “one of the most enduring achievements of the Taft Administration, and very possibly its greatest."