Elwyn Riley Shaw

Born in Lyndon, Whiteside County, Illinois, Shaw received education locally in the public schools, then traveled to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he received a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Michigan Law School in 1910, and immediately entered private practice in Illinois.

After returning to Illinois and being admitted to the bar, Shaw would begin a private legal practice in the Rock River valley area in western Illinois based in Freeport, Stephenson County, Illinois that continued for three decades. A lifelong Democrat, Shaw was an alternate at the Democratic National Convention in 1932.[1]

Following President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's landslide victory during the Great Depression, Shaw won election as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Illinois. He served for nearly a decade (1933 to 1942), including as Chief Justice from 1938 to 1939. He was a member of the National Railway Labor Panel in 1943.[2]

On March 7, 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt nominated Saw to a seat on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois vacated by the death of Judge Charles Edgar Woodward in 1942. The United States Senate confirmed on May 3, 1944, and Shaw received his commission on May 9, 1944. Shaw served in that capacity until his death on July 18, 1950.[2]

• Elwyn Riley Shaw at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.