Isaac Daniel Stewart: Utah in America

Val D. Rust

Isaac Daniel Stewart: Utah in America is the biography of a man who lived during the time the state of Utah was reassessing its place in the United States. During the 1950s-1970s, state leaders rejected intrusion on their sovereignty on the part of the central government, claiming documents such as the Bill of Rights or the Fourteenth Amendment did not hold for them. Consequently, the Utah State Legislature and the Utah Supreme Court were scorned by critics and even became laughing stocks by legal specialists. Dan Stewart was one man who was a central figure in the state, working as a law professor and a justice of the Utah Supreme Court for twenty-one years.

Isaac Daniel (Dan) Stewart was an outstanding student and an all-star athlete. While he was in college, in the early 1950s, he interrupted his schooling to serve for 30 months on a Mormon mission in West Germany. Toward the end of his mission, he contracted polio and almost died. It took years for him to rehabilitate, but he was a quadriplegic and confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Even so, he was the valedictorian of his graduating class at the University of Utah. After working in Washington for a time, he became a professor of law at the University of Utah and later made outstanding contributions in a Salt Lake law firm. He was then appointed to the Utah Supreme Court. A major mark of distinction of Dan was that he challenged attempts on the part of state leaders to separate from the Central government in Washington, D.C. and the laws of the land. He was able to help turn the Utah Supreme Court around and helped turn it into one of the best courts in the land.