Davis was born on December 19, 1908 in Leeton, Missouri. He received his B.A. from Whitman College in 1931 and his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1934. After law school, Davis practiced law in Cleveland for less than a year before joining the faculty of West Virginia University in 1935. He held a position at the Department of Justice from 19391940 before resuming teaching. His teaching career took him to the University of Texas, Harvard, the University of Minnesota and the University of Chicago. In 1976 he moved to the University of San Diego where he taught until his retirement in 1994. In 1946, Davis helped draft the Administrative Procedure Act. His 1958 Administrative Law Treatise defined the field of American administrative law by "pulling together information scattered through works on constitutional, procedural and evidence law" and explaining their relevance to "thousands of lawyers who practice before governmental administrative agencies and the judges who review agency decisions" in the context of modern government. He is also known for his 1969 monograph Discretionary Justice and its 1976 follow-up Police Discretion, in which he argued that more legal restrictions should be placed on administrators in their ability to develop policies. Discretionary Justice has been described as a "short masterpiece".
Administrative Law Treatise
Davis' 1958 Administrative Law Treatise, itself an expansion of his 1951 Administrative Law work, was his magnum opus. Earl W. Kintner, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, heralded the work in a contemporary review as "...one of the truly monumental events of this generation of legal writing." Davis updated the Treatise with supplemental volumes throughout the 1960's and '70's to keep the work up-to-date. In 1978, Davis formed the K.C. Davis Publishing Company in San Diego to publish the 2nd edition of the Treatise. In 1994, he took on Richard J. Pierce as a co-author for the 3rd edition. Following Davis' death, Pierce took over as the sole author of the Treatise which remains in publication to this day.
Legacy
Davis died of natural causes on August 30, 2003 in San Diego, California. He is remembered as "one of the twentieth century's outstanding authorities on administrative law", although his influence was recognized well before his death. Contemporary reviewers refer to his intellectual "stature" and praise his "vivid opinions, his exuberant delight with effective innovation" In 1987, the Los Angeles Times described him as "a lion of jurisprudence, a scholar whose seminal thinking about law and how it is created have made him well-known in the nation's law schools and courthouses." Following his death, Bill Funk, chairman of the ABA Admin Law section said "Davis’ shadow falls over virtually all that administrative lawyers do, To say he was a giant in his field is like saying Mt. Everest is a big mountain." In 2009, The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law referred to his Treatise as the "canonical reference" of Administrative Law. Davis' work continues to be cited in scholarship and court cases.
