Alexis Caswell Angell

Alexis Caswell Angell (April 26, 1857 – December 24, 1932) was a United States federal judge.

Biography

Alexis Caswell Angell was born in Providence, Rhode Island to James Burrill Angell and Sarah Swope Caswell, and was named for his maternal grandfather, Alexis Caswell, who was to become President of Brown University. When Angell was 14, the family moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan when his father was appointed to the presidency of the University of Michigan. Angell received an A.B. from the University of Michigan in 1878 and read law in 1879, also receiving an LL.B. from the University of Michigan Law Department in 1880. In that same year, he married Fanny Cary Cooley, daughter of his law professor, Thomas McIntyre Cooley.

Angell was in private practice in Detroit, Michigan from 1880 to 1932, and was a professor of law at the University of Michigan from 1893 to 1898, lecturing one half of each year. He edited the second edition of Cooley's Torts (1888), the sixth edition of his Constitutional Limitations (1890), and the second edition of his Principles of Constitutional Law (1891).

On February 25, 1911, Angell was nominated by President William Howard Taft to a seat on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan vacated by Henry Harrison Swan. Angell was confirmed by the United States Senate on March 2, 1911, and received his commission the same day. He served for just over a year, resigning on June 1, 1912.