not Shake was a Klan member. Shake never fully denied Klan membership in his speeches, but he did label the claims "insinuations and false charges." Newspapers of the time did not report that he refuted Emison's claims. Shake blamed his loss on New York governor Al Smith's nomination in the U.S. presidential election of 1928. Nearly the entire Indiana Democratic slate of candidates, including Shake, were defeated in the elections that year. After his defeat in the race for Indiana attorney general, Shake continued to practice law in Vincennes for the next ten years. His primary client was the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Shake represented the railroad in litigation within a four-county area of southern Indiana. Known as an skilled orator, Shake also delivered speeches in support of Democratic causes and wrote books about Vincennes. Indiana Supreme Court justice In December 1937 Indiana governor M. Clifford Townsend appointed Shake to the Indiana Supreme Court to fill a vacancy that was created when U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Indiana Supreme Court Justice Walter E. Treanor to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago. Shake completed the remaining year of Justice Treanor's term on the Indiana Supreme Court and was elected in his own right to a six-year term in 1938. Shake served on the Court from January 4, 1938, to January 7, 1945, and presided as chief justice three times (1939, 1941, and 1944). In the Warren v Indiana Telephone Company case, Shake's opinion resolved a longstanding debate about the Indiana Court of Appeals. Shake rejected the Indiana General Assembly's authority to limit the Court's powers, made the state's Court of Appeals an intermediate court, and brought Indiana's court system into alignment with court systems of the majority of other states. Shake decided not to run for re-election because he believed that the state's voters would choose Republican candidates in the upcoming election and he wanted to avoid a defeat. At the end of his term on the bench in 1945, Shake returned to Vincennes to practice law with his son, Gilbert. Shake's first wife, Anna, died on November 2, 1946. Between 1938 and 1946 Shake became involved at the national level in mediating labor disputes. He mediated an estimated 400 labor disputes as a National Mediation Board referee. Shake gained a national reputation when he served on six presidential emergency boards charged with settling railroad