Born: Thursday, January 31st, 1861
Died: Friday, March 24th, 1939
Birthplace: Republican Grove, Virginia
Religion: Baptist
Education: University of Virginia
Career: Prosecuting Attorney (1897-1899)
Superior Court (1908-1918)
Served: Saturday, May 11th, 1918 to Monday, January 11th, 1937
Chief Justice: Monday, January 14th, 1929 to Monday, January 12th, 1931
Political Party: Democrat
Appointing Governor: Lister (Democrat)
John R. Mitchell was born in rural Virginia. His father, John A. Mitchell, fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. His mother, Mary F. Pringle, was a native Virginian. After attending public schools, Mitchell studied law with an attorney and then attended the University of Virginia for several terms. In 1888 he moved to Washington and passed the bar the next year. Between 1889 and 1893 Mitchell practiced law in partnership with Milo Root of Olympia.Mitchell served as Thurston County Prosecuting Attorney between 1897 and 1899. Shortly after leaving the prosecutor’s office he formed a law partnership with Thomas M. Vance which lasted until 1908 when Mitchell won election as superior court judge for Thurston County. He was reelected to the state trial bench for two additional terms without opposition.
In May 1918, Democratic Governor Ernest Lister appointed the Democrat Mitchell to fill a vacancy on the supreme court. Mitchell had been a serious contender for virtually all of the court vacancies during Lister’s term of office, but the governor thought the Thurston County bench needed the judge. In that position Mitchell heard all the important state cases coming from Olympia. But by 1918 the governor, having found an acceptable successor for the superior court, elevated Mitchell to the state’s high bench. Mitchell led all judicial candidates in the September and November 1918 balloting, a practice he repeated in 1924 and 1930.
In an address to members of the state Prosecuting Attorneys’ Association in 1921, Judge Mitchell provided a glimpse at the supreme court’s decisional process:
In the orderly dispatch of our business each of us, in a department or en banc as the case may be, examines all the briefs at hand in all the cases to be argued on any day, not later than the night before the cases are to be heard … After our discussions in the consultation room the Chief Justice makes assignments of the cases for further study and the writing of opinions. In the very nature of things it is manifest that when we first commence to read the briefs, we at that time, commence to form some opinion of the case. Now, remembering that judges are human and therefore find it is harder to unlearn than to learn, you can readily see the importance, for the sake of your cause and for our protection, of having your briefs in our hands at the very commencement of our reading the briefs …
[We] are often asked if oral arguments are useful. The matter is not even debatable – the emphatic answer is affirmative. Personally I make this confession; I have never listened to a lawyer’s argument on the facts or law of his case without learning something helpful to a proper solution of the problems involved. I know other judges desire oral arguments. The wisdom of the course is suggested by the long established rules which provide for it. .. [O]ral discussion-[gives] the human touch and invest[s] the whole controversy with your faith in your contention, pressing home what you consider the most dominant features as to the facts and law of the case. In oral argument you are the teachers, we the pupils. You are advising us of something that you have thoroughly and recently studied, and we are engaged in learning of it from you.
Judge Mitchell tended to assume a moderate-to-conservative position on the court, often aligning with judges Jessie Bridges and John Main. He rarely dissented.
Because of ill health, Mitchell retired in 1937 and died two years later. He married Hallie Price of Clarksville, Tennessee, in 1891 and they were parents of one son, Richard Sharp, who became a prominent physician and surgeon. Mitchell helped form the Olympia Young Men’s Christian Association, serving as its first secretary-treasurer. He was a member of the Baptist Church, Masons, Knights of Pythias, and Woodmen of the World.
Selected References
Washington State Bar Association Proceedings (1921), pp. 172-176; H. James Boswell, American Blue Book: Western Washington (1922), p. 34; C. S. Reinhart, A History of the Supreme Court of the Territory and State of Washington (n.d.), p. 122.
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.
