George Weston Anderson

George Weston Anderson (September 1, 1861 – February 14, 1938) was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Education and career

Born on September 1, 1861, on a farm in Acworth, New Hampshire, He entered private practice in Boston, Massachusetts from 1890 to 1914.

Constitutional convention delegate

In 1916, the Massachusetts General Court and electorate approved a calling of a Constitutional Convention. Anderson was elected as a Delegate at Large to serve as a member of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1917.

Federal judicial service

Anderson was nominated by President Woodrow Wilson on October 1, 1918, to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit vacated by Judge Frederic Dodge. Of the deportation proceedings he wrote: "A more lawless proceeding it is hard for anyone to conceive.... I can hardly sit on the bench as an American citizen and restrain my indignation. I view with horror such proceedings as this." The Colyer case remained controversial. For example, during Senate hearings held to consider charges that Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer had ignored due process in arresting radicals in late 1919 and early 1920, a former Department of Justice official testified that Anderson had shown favoritism to witnesses on behalf of the defendant aliens in the Colyer deportation case.

Family

Anderson was married for eight years to Winnie E. Mitchell of Mason, New Hampshire, until her death. They had two sons and a daughter. In 1897 he married Addie Earle Kenerson of Boston, who survived him. The same year, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He lived in the Wellesley Hills neighborhood of Wellesley, Massachusetts.

Retirement and death

Anderson took inactive senior status in 1932, meaning that while he remained a federal judge, he no longer heard cases or participated in the business of the court. He died at his winter home in DeLand, Florida, on February 14, 1938.