Ramsey County History – Summer 2019: “William DeWitt Mitchell: The Other William Mitchell”

William DeWitt Mitchell: The Other William Mitchell
Authors: Thomas H. Boyd and Douglas R. Heidenreich

“Like Father, Like Son” is a common saying that most certainly applies to this article. Thomas H. Boyd, a St. Paul attorney, and Douglas R. Heidenreich, former dean of the William Mitchell College of Law, which later combined with the Hamline University School of Law to form Mitchell Hamline School of Law, share the story of “a learned son of a learned father.” The father is William Bell Mitchell, a revered state Supreme Court justice who served at the end of the nineteenth century and for whom the law school is named, in part. The son is William DeWitt Mitchell, who followed his father into the legal profession, making his mark in the first half of the twentieth century locally as a military officer and attorney and nationally as solicitor general in the Calvin Coolidge administration and attorney general for President Herbert Hoover. Neither Republican president had a problem endorsing the young Democrat for positions in the US Department of Justice, thanks to Mitchell’s sterling reputation as non-partisan, level-headed, and just.
PDF of T. Boyd and D. Heidenreich article