Davis, John William (1873-1955), a famous American constitutional lawyer, was the unsuccessful Democratic candidate for the presidency of the United States in 1924. He lost to Calvin Coolidge. As a constitutional lawyer, Davis argued 140 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, more than anyone had argued up to that time. Many considered him the country’s most distinguished constitutional lawyer. But he lost his last and most famous case, his Supreme Court defense of South Carolina’s public school segregation laws in 1954.
Davis was born on April 13, 1873, in Clarksburg, West Virginia. He represented West Virginia in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1911 to 1913. He served as U.S. solicitor general from 1913 to 1918 and as ambassador to Britain from 1918 to 1921. He died on March 24, 1955.
