Viewing Mitchell Studies Category (7) found:

William Mitchell: "Reminiscences of the Establishment of the Territorial Courts, Judges, Justices and Members of the Bar of Winona County" (1889).

On August 30, 1889, an address written by Associate Justice William Mitchell was read to the Winona County Old Settlers' Association by his former law partner, William H. Yale. The subjects of Mitchell's paper were the judges and lawyers of the county during the territorial period, 1849 to 1858.

It is one of the few times when we can read his writings on something other than a court case.

It is obvious that he wrote this address with nearly the same care he devoted to an opinion for his court. He researched the early court records of Winona County. His description of the formation of the state, the county and the courts does not add much to what has been written by others. His paper is valuable for its deft, penetrating sketches of lawyers and judges in the county's formative era. They show him to be a shrewd judge of character.

Mitchell's address was published in the afternoon edition of the "Winona Daily Republican" on August 30th, and eight years later in a county history written by LaFayette H. Bunnell.

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William DeWitt Mitchell (1874-1955).

A graduate of the University of Minnesota Law School in 1896, William D. Mitchell practiced briefly with his father in Winona and, later, in several prominent firms in St. Paul, including How, Taylor & Mitchell and Mitchell, Dougherty, Rumble, Bunn & Butler. He interrupted his practice to enlist in the army during the Spanish-American and the First World Wars. He was Solicitor General in the Coolidge Administration, 1925-1929, and Attorney General under President Hoover, 1929-1933. He then moved to New York where he practiced law, engaged in bar association activities, and served on numerous commissions, including the Advisory Committee on the proposed Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. He died on August 25, 1955, at age eighty-one. On October 7th, a memorial was presented to him by the Bar of the City of New York.

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Memorial Proceedings for William Mitchell. (1900).

William Mitchell, who served on the Minnesota Supreme Court from March 1881, to January 1900, died on August 21, 1900. Six weeks later memorial proceedings were held in the Supreme Court in St. Paul. Friends, lawyers and judges delivered tributes to him. In the style and tradition of nineteenth century funerary oratory, they recited a wide range of verse about death or to illuminate Mitchell's admirable qualities on and off the bench. The eulogists and the poems they quoted are identified in footnotes.

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Edwin Ames Jaggard: "William Mitchell." (1909)

William Mitchell served as associate justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court from 1881 to 1900.

This article appeared first as a chapter in the eighth and final volume of "Great American Lawyers," a set of profiles of famous judges and lawyers in nineteenth century America, edited by William Draper Lewis, Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and published in 1909. The author of this article is Edwin Ames Jaggard, who served as Associate Justice on the same court from 1905 to 1911.

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Judge Mitchell's Court Calendars for March & October 1879.

The proceedings of the Winona County District Court during March 13-18, 1879, and October 16-20, 1879, were reported by "The Winona Herald."

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Douglas A. Hedin: "When Justice Mitchell Changed His Mind--Twice." (2006)

In his first two years on the supreme court, Associate Justice William Mitchell wrote two opinions in which he announced that he had changed his mind on issues he had recently decided the other way. The first involved an "imperfect" mortgage redemption statute, the second concerned whether evidence of subsequent repairs was admissible in a negligence action. This article, which appeared first in the June 2006 issue of "The Hennepin Lawyer," discusses those cases and Mitchell's attitude toward precedent.

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John Stryker: "William Mitchell" (1904).

A chapter on Justice William Mitchell written by John Stryker, a St. Paul lawyer, was included in the first volume of "The History of the Bench and Bar of Minnesota," compiled by Hiram Fairchild Stevens and published in 1904. It was the last of five profiles of Mitchell that appeared in books published between 1879 and 1904. Though short, Stryker's profile is the first that went beyond the mere recitation of biographical data on Mitchell to discuss his thinking, especially his willingness to re-examine precedent. All five profiles are reproduced in this article.

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