John W. Davis
John William Davis (
April 13,
1873 —
March 24,
1955) was an
American politician and lawyer. He was the
Democratic Party nominee for
President of the United States during the
1924 presidential election, losing to
Republican candidate
Calvin Coolidge.
Davis was born in
Clarksburg,
West Virginia. His father was John James Davis, a West Virginia legislator who had supported slavery and opposed ratification of the
Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Davis acquired much of his father's conservative politics, opposing women's suffrage, child-labor laws, anti-lynching legislation and
Harry S. Truman's civil rights program while privately defending the poll tax and 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).
Davis graduated with a law degree from
Washington and Lee University, where he was a member of
Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity. 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. He served as
U.S. Solicitor General from 1913 to
1918 and as an
ambassador to the
United Kingdom 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. 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 Coolidge, who did not leave his house to campaign.
He was a member of the National Advisory Council of the
Crusaders, an influential organization that promoted the
repeal of prohibition.
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, more than anyone had argued to that time. His firm, Davis, Polk, Wardlaw, 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 in the United States Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality and application of New Deal legislation. Davis lost many of these battles, though eloquent in his advocacy. His legal career is most remembered for his final, losing appearance before the Supreme Court, in which he unsuccessfully defended the "
separate but equal" doctrine in
Briggs v. Elliot, a companion case to
Brown v. Board of Education. Davis not only brought his great talents as an advocate to the defense of racial segregation but, 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.
*
Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer*
Congressional biography*
Washington and Lee University biography
