Evening star., 1938-02-13
TRIAL WORK ENDS
F0RVAN DEVANTER
Mi|dness of Retired Supreme
Court Justices Wins Lower
Tribunal Aides.
By IRA WOLFERT

ny Inn "oAT
NEW YORK, Feb. IL (N.AN.A)-
The familiar spectacle of Willis Van
Devanter, retired justice of the United
States Supreme Court, thrusting his
arm over the bench to arrest mature
and willy lawyers in their efforts to
squeeze hot one past to the jury with
q Nov, you sit down, young man"
Federal District Court here.
The 78-year-old justice has all but
finished his six weeks here as a trial
Judge He wound up his last trial
yesterday. There remain. he says, "a
few aftermaths to previous trials, but
I expect Wednesday will see my cal
endar clean" Among the after
maths is the disposition of anything
up to the next Is years of the life of
a convict on probation who confessed
to perjury before the justice.
The next few weeks will see the JUS
tice filling various private engage
ments in Middle Western cities. Then
back to the rain-stained hat, the khaki
shirt, khaki breeches, high boots and
the 788-acre farm in Simpsonville,
Md, on which he does enough work
to keep his long, strong hands cal
loused and his lean face weather.
beaten.
Praised by Secretaries.
He will be missed by the lawyers who
used to squeeze into the courtroom to
r;,. irio Of
manner of presiding over case and,
particularly, by the secretaries and
stenographers, the majority of them
middle-aged, in the large rooms up
stairs.
He was so gentle and chivalrous," :"
said one of them, a mother of grown
children. He treats us as if we were
all little girls running around in long
curls. We got so We hardly dared to
breathe when We were near him. We
were afraid we would destroy the il
lusion.'
He describes his six weeks here as
Interesting" and adds, Il have al
ways like trial work" For 27 years,
while he sat ON the Supreme Court, he
wasn't able to do any.
Every rose has it's thorn" he said,
land, in the course of criminal trials,
not everything happens as you would
order it. But the problems to be met
and, particularly, the panorama of
humanity such strange people
"'* have been very interesting I
wouldn't want it as regular thing.
But to step out of farm and onto a
bench in a Criminal Court acts as a
tonic for the spirit
The tonic for the spirit has been a
little exhausting for the body. Justice
Van Devanter will be 70 April II, but
he has set a pace not many OF the
younger judges here seem to feel up to.
Cases Were Unimportant.
The three cases over which he pre-
sided were all little miserable-a
$4,000 Treasury note forgery, a small
Job of counterfeiting, the third trial
of a. ring accused of variety of con-
fidence games. Judges handling such
cases have always found audiences
hard to come by, but Justice Van De-
vanter, even when it rained or showed,
played to packed houses. with people
jamming the Railways as they waited
for vacant seats.
The crowds were problem. ex-
hausting for any judge. They meant
a ceaseless battle for decorum and,
when the problem was completed, as
1t was in two Of the cases. by Show
men lawyers whose major opus was a
sonata on the heartstrings of those
present, the battle became a war. But
the justice ruled with an unswerv-
ingly firm hand.
Now, you sit down, young man."
he told an astounded lawyer whose
face, es he sank open-mouthed into
his seat, flushed to the roots of his
gray hair "All right, but not so
loud" he told Samuel Leibowitz just
as that lawyer was gathering himself
for one of his famous bursts of out
rage. The jokes of attorneys and the
flounderings of frightened witnesses
drew no laughter ever in Justice Van
Oevanter's court.
He wound up his term here with a
session that would have put a crimp
in any one and that wore his secre-
tary, Miss Zaff, down to a frazzle.
After full day in court, he took Miss
Zaff out to hasty dinner and then
returned to his chambers to prepare
his charge. 1t was difficult, complex
case. It has resulted in two previous
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