Arba Seymour Van Valkenburgh

• Smith vs. Kansas City Title & Trust Company, in which the Federal Farm Loan Act was sustained and the creation of land banks held valid, this ruling being affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court (255 U.S. 180).
• Missouri vs. Holland, sustaining the Migratory Bird Treaty between the United States and Great Britain and the Act of Congress enforcing it (258 Fed. 479, affirmed 252 U.S. 416).
• Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad vs. United States, involving the interpretation of the Federal Safety Appliance Act (affirmed 237 U.S. 410).
• United States vs. Emery, Bird, Thayer Dry Goods Company, involving the interpretation of the Federal Corporation Tax Law of 1909 (198 Fed. 242, affirmed 237 U.S. 28).
• St. Joseph Railway, Light & Power Company, vs. Public Service Commissions, which defined certain important principles of valuation of public utilities and the regulation of rates by public authorities (268 Fed. 267).

During World War I Van Valkenburg presided over a number of high-profile political cases. Van Valkenburg was the presiding judge at the trial of a young syndicalist activist from Kansas City named Earl Browder for refusal to register for the draft and conspiracy to interfere with same. Browder, later the General Secretary of the Communist Party USA, was sentenced by Van Valkenburgh to two years imprisonment, which he served at Bates County Jail in Butler, Missouri and Leavenworth Penitentiary.[2]

Van Valkenburgh was also the judge who sentenced Carl Glesser, a naturalized American citizen of German birth and publisher of the Missouri Staats-Zeitung, to five years in Leavenworth after Glesser had pleaded guilty to violating the Espionage Act for thirteen articles he had published. Glesser began serving his sentence on April 30, 1918.[3]

Van Valkenburgh presided over the May 1918 trial of socialist activist Rose Pastor Stokes for alleged violation of the Espionage Act through speaking against war profiteering. Although Stokes proclaimed that she had "at all times recognized the cause of our entrance into the war" and "at no time opposed the war," Stokes was found guilty at trial and Van Valkenburg delivered a draconian sentence of 10 years' imprisonment, declaring Stokes to be "part of a systematic program to create discontent with the war" and to advance the cause of revolution.[4]

• Wolf Bros. vs. Hamilton Brown Shoe Company, viewing important principles of the law of trademark and unfair competition (206 Fed. 611, affirmed 240 U.S. 251)
• United States vs. Utah Power & Light Company, involving public lands and water power rights (three opinions: 209 Fed. 554; 230 Fed. 328; 242 Fed. 924).
• Whitesides vs. Norton, which involved riparian rights and incidentally, the boundary line between Minnesota and Wisconsin (205 Fed. 5).