Born: Wednesday, March 16th, 1887
Died: Sunday, September 22nd, 1957
Birthplace: Frederick, South Dakota
Religion: Episcopalian
Education: University of Wisconsin, LL.B. (1924)
Career: City Attorney (1927-1935)
Prosecuting Attorney (1931-1939)
Superior Court (1939-1946)
Served: Tuesday, September 3rd, 1946 to Sunday, September 22nd, 1957
Chief Justice: Monday, January 8th, 1951 to Monday, January 12th, 1953
Political Party: Democrat
Appointing Governor: Wallgren (Democrat)
Edgar Ward Schwellenbach was born on March 16, 1887, in Frederick, a small farming community of 100 inhabitants in northeastern South Dakota, the son of Frank W. and Martha (Baxter) Schwellenbach. Edgar grew up in Wisconsin, served in the First World War, and lived a fairly complete and productive life before turning to law as a profession. At the age of thirty-seven he graduated from the University of Wisconsin Law School. He immediately gained admittance to the Wisconsin bar, but moved to Seattle and passed the Washington bar in 1925. In 1926 he moved to Ephrata, beginning a long attachment to eastern Washington and the Columbia Basin.“Ed” Schwellenbach’s public career began in 1927 when he became Ephrata City Attorney. In 1930 voters elected him prosecuting attorney for Grant County and he won reelection in 1934. During his first term he distinguished himself as a thorough and vigorous prosecutor and competent trial lawyer. During his second term he assumed a leading role in promoting the development of Grand Coulee Dam and securing continued appropriations. He appeared twice before the U. S. Supreme Court and won a legal battle to require Grand Coulee Dam contractors to pay personal property taxes on their equipment to hard-pressed Grant County. His brother, Louis B. Schwellenbach – senator, Secretary of Labor, and federal judge – shared with him these exciting times both for Democrats and the Columbia Basin.
When Judge Clyde Jeffers won election to the state supreme court, Governor Clarence Martin appointed Schwellenbach to fill Jeffers’s vacancy on the superior court. He served as a trial judge for seven years, from 1939 to 1946, surprising many critics who had not expected someone with Schwellenbach’s background as a prosecutor and partisan politician to remain objective once on the bench.
Early in the summer of 1946 Judge Bruce Blake announced his intention to leave the high bench in September, enticing Schwellenbach and Tom Grady to file for the vacancy. Schwellenbach turned back Grady’s challenge by 188,296 to 106,187 votes in the primary, leaving him unopposed in the general election. Because of his Democratic party credentials, Governor Mon Wallgren selected Schwellenbach to begin his official supreme court duties early in September upon Blake’s retirement.
While a member of the supreme court, Schwellenbach wrote 279 opinions. Judge Charles Donworth, citing two of the Schwellenbach’s landmark decisions – Adkisson v. Seattle and Owens v. Scott Publishing Company – noted that these opinions showed the judge:
possessed to a marked degree the ability to view the legal problems involved in a case with the utmost objectivity. He had the inherent sense of justice springing from a high sense of moral integrity. His adherence to the applicable rules of law as he interpreted them was unwavering, yet he was always tolerant of the views of those who disagreed with him.
Justice Schwellenbach’s decisional style included a vigorous give-and-take with his law clerk. He wanted an independent clerk not reluctant to express disagreement. The justice once told a clerk he was being “paid to disagree.” One former clerk described his close decisional relationship with the judge:
My judge treated me as a junior partner. Although the ultimate form of the opinion was his responsibility, nevertheless, he relied heavily on my assistance and utilized my abilities to the utmost.
The judge would read the trial court record while I briefed the law. Then he wrote a rough draft which I would redraft. Then we would argue back and forth … We swore and sweated and argued and swore some more, but in the end we were both proud of his opinions.
Schwellenbach headed the court during the critical years between 1948 and 1952. The court had been split by several acrimonious elements, and its image had suffered substantially with the public and members of the profession. As chief justice, Schwellenbach restored a sense of common purpose to the court. He conducted an unprecedented statewide “tour” for its members and their wives, meeting with the public and contacting attorneys. Judge Charles Donworth also recognized the social role that Schwellenbach assumed on the court: “He was always ready to interrupt his own work to discuss with other members of the Court their judicial problems. His suggestions were most helpful, because they were frank and forthright expressions of his own views.”
As might be anticipated, Judge Schwellenbach retained his New Deal views while on the court. He was relatively liberal in decisions concerning criminal law, government regulation, and civil rights. However, he did not aggressively pursue a liberal solution to legal issues. He was, generally, neutral in his attitude toward the desirability of judicial intervention in political, social, and economic issues brought to the court.
Schwellenbach won reelection to the high court in 1952 without opposition and led the judicial ticket in total votes. In early September 1957, the judge entered a Seattle hospital for minor surgery but failed to recover. He died on September 22, 1957 of a pulmonary ailment.
Schwellenbach married Ethel Hoagland of Wisconsin in June 1918. They had a son, Baxter Ward, and a daughter, Martha Iverson. The judge belonged to Forty-and-Eight, the American Legion, Scottish Rite Masons, Phi Delta Phi, and the Episcopalian Church.
Selected References
Memorial services, Washington Reports, vol. 52, 2d (1958), pp. xxv-xxxiii; C. W. Taylor, Eminent Judges and Lawyers of the Northwest (1954), p. 55; Charles Sheldon, A Century of Judging: A Political History of the Washington Supreme Court (1988), pp. 101, 112, 293-303.
The preceding biography is from Charles Sheldon's The Washington High Bench: A Biographical History of the State Supreme Court, 1889-1991, © 1992 by the Board of Regents of Washington State University. Reprinted here with permission and licensed to the public under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License by The Temple of Justice Project.
