Walter I. Hayes

Who was Walter I. Hayes?

Walter Ingalls Hayes was a four-term Democratic U.S. Representative from Iowa's 2nd congressional district during the Gilded Age.

Hayes was born in Marshall, Michigan. He attended the common schools and graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor in 1863, and was admitted to the bar the same year. Hayes commenced practice in Marshall and in 1864 and 1865 held the positions of Marshall city attorney and United States commissioner for the eastern district of Michigan.

Hayes relocating to Iowa as the Civil War came to an end. He served as United States commissioner for Iowa from 1865 to 1875 and was city solicitor of Clinton, Iowa in 1870. Hayes was the district judge of the seventh judicial district of Iowa from 1875 to 1887. In that capacity, in 1882 he presided over one of the most important cases in the state of that era, in which liquor merchants challenged the enforceability of the 1882 amendment to the Iowa Constitution requiring prohibition. Hayes declared the amendment unconstitutional on procedural grounds, based on the failure of the law to pass both houses of the Iowa General Assembly in identical form. The Iowa Supreme Court affirmed Hayes' ruling, but in the next session the Iowa General Assembly adopted prohibition, by statute, in a constitutional fashion.