Howard Wiest

He then moved to Detroit, Michigan, read law at the Detroit law firm of Atkinson & Atkinson, and was admitted to the Michigan bar in 1885. He was appointed commissioner of the Wayne County Michigan Circuit Courts by Governor Cyrus Luce. In April, 1890 he started ten years in private practice in Ingham County.

On December 19, 1888, he married Cora Newman of Pontiac, and they had two children: Lucille Wiest and Theodosia Milkton (of Baltimore, Maryland).

His name first appears at 213 Michigan Reports 95. He served in a judicial capacity for 44 continuous years.

In 1916 he became the first to fill the statutorily created position of "presiding Circuit Judge" in Michigan. He served as a Justice for twenty-four and one-half years, until his death in 1945. More than 1,400 opinions he authored appeared in 96 volumes of the Michigan Supreme Court Reports. He participated in deciding over ten thousand cases. He himself mixed the mortar and laid the brick "for several commodious buildings" to house his 10,000 volume personal library. He regularly feted a large Ox roast summer dinner, the culmination of which was in 1940 when 1,200 notable guests gathered, including the president of the American Bar Association and prominent members of government and the judiciary.

Death and legacy He died in hospital after a few years of decline, but a relatively short illness.

He was the subject of a portrait executed in 1946 by Detroit artist Roy C. Gamble (1887–1972) which hangs at the Supreme Court. The portrait joins nine others by Gamble of Chief Justices.

His remains are interred at Mount Hope Cemetery in Lansing, Michigan.

Leland W. Carr was appointed as his successor by Governor Harry F. Kelly in 1945.