Early Life
Rutledge was born in Cloverport, Kentucky (more specifically, at nearby Tar Springs) to Wiley Blount Rutledge, Sr. (d. 1944), a Southern Baptist minister, and Mary Lou Wigginton Rutledge (d. 1903). Another son died in infancy, and then his sister Margaret was born in 1897. His family moved about while he was young, but he attended college at Maryville College and then the University of Wisconsin–Madison, graduating from there in 1914. Rutledge taught high school in Indiana while attending the predecessor of the now Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law part-time. He later moved to Colorado, and received a degree from the University of Colorado School of Law in Boulder. While matriculating at Colorado, Rutledge joined the Pi Chapter of Alpha Sigma Phi Fraternity.
On August 28, 1917, Rutledge married Annabel Person. The couple had three children: Mary Lou (1922), Jean Ann (1925), and Neal (1927).
Rutledge worked in private practice in Boulder for a few years before deciding to instead pursue an academic career. He taught law at the University of Colorado (1924–1926) and at Washington University in St. Louis (1926–1935). He was named Dean of the University of Iowa College of Law in 1935. From this position, Rutledge was a vocal supporter of Franklin Roosevelt's plan to pack the Supreme Court. Rutledge also served as Dean of Washington University School of Law from 1930–1935, where the Wiley Rutledge Moot Court competition is named in his honor.
Read more about this topic: Wiley Blount Rutledge
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“I could be, I discovered, by turns stern, loving, wise, silly, youthful, aged, racial, universal, indulgent, strict, with a remarkably easy and often cunning detachment ... various ways that an adult, spurred by guilt, by annoyance, by condescension, by loneliness, deals with the prerogatives of power and love.”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“Although this garrulity of advising is born with us, I confess that life is rather a subject of wonder, than of didactics. So much fate, so much irresistible dictation from temperament and unknown inspiration enter into it, that we doubt we can say anything out of our own experience whereby to help each other.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)