john william davis
united states congressman
biography
Born on April 14, 1873 in Clarksburg, West Virginia, John W. Davis was the son of a prominent West Virginian lawyer. He graduated from Washington and Lee University in 1892 and took his bachelor’s degree in law there in 1895 and was thereafter admitted to the bar.
In 1899 Davis was elected to the West Virginia House of Delegates. Elected to Congress from the 1st West Virginia district, he resigned on being appointed in 1913 solicitor general of the United States, a post which he occupied until 1918 at the same time serving as ocunselor of the American Red Cross.
In September of 1918, Davis was one of the delegates at a conference in Berne, Switzerland, with the Germans on treatment and exchange of prisoners. Davis served as an ambassador to Great Britain from 1918 to 1921 and in 1922 was elected president of the American Bar Association.
Davis was nominated for the presidency by the Democrats on the 103d ballot at the 1924 convention, ending a two-week deadlock between the supporters of Alfred E. Smith and William Gibbs McAdoo. After he was badly defeated in the election by incumbent Calvin Coolidge, Davis devoted himself to the practice of law. He was regarded as a leading constitutional expert, and shortly before his death he argued against school desegregation in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. He appeared before the United States Supreme Court one hundred and forty times, more than any other attorney in the nation’s history.
