William Henry Moody (December 23, 1853 – July 2, 1917) was an American politician and jurist who held positions in all three branches of the Government of the United States. He represented parts of Essex County, Massachusetts in the United States House of Representatives from 1895 until 1902. He then served in the cabinet of President Theodore Roosevelt as Secretary of the Navy and Attorney General before Roosevelt appointed him to the United States Supreme Court in 1906. He retired from the Court for health reasons after a brief tenure of just less than four years. A progressive like Roosevelt, he opposed racial segregation and spoke out in favor of African-American civil rights.[2]
Early in his legal career, Moody first was elected city solicitor of Haverhill, Massachusetts in 1888. After appointment as the District Attorney for Eastern Massachusetts in 1890, he gained widespread notoriety in 1893 as the junior prosecutor in the Lizzie Borden murder case. While his efforts were unsuccessful he was generally acknowledged as the most competent and effective of the attorneys on either side.
During President Theodore Roosevelt's administration, Moody served as the Secretary of Navy from 1902 to 1904. He oversaw the start of the Roosevelt-era expansion of the Navy, including an increase in the number of ships, as well as an effort to increase manpower by improving efforts to recruit sailors from non-coastal states. Moody also negotiated with the government of Cuba for the original lease that permitted construction and occupation of the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.
U.S. Attorney General
Moody served as Attorney General from 1904 to 1906. In this post, Moody actively followed Roosevelt's trust-busting policies, negotiating with 'good' trusts such as U.S. Steel but successfully prosecuting 'bad' ones such as Standard Oil and the Beef Trust.[5] After the Lynching of Paul Reed and Will Cato, Moody refused to grant permission for an indictment, believing no federal right had been violated.[6]
Moody's service on the Court was brief but eventful, and he authored 67 opinions and five dissents. His most noted opinion was in the minority in the Employers Liability Cases (1908), where he held that Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce included the ability to legislate management's relationship with employees. While he generally supported enhanced federal powers, opinions such as Twining v. New Jersey (1908), where he held that the Fifth Amendment's protection against compulsory self-incrimination did not apply to cases presented in state courts, made him hard to pigeonhole. He also wrote for a unanimous Court in the famous case of Louisville & Nashville Railroad Co. v. Mottley, which limited federal question jurisdiction to cases in which the plaintiff's cause of action was based on federal law.
By 1908, Moody suffered severe rheumatism. This affected Moody to such an extent that his last sitting on the bench was May 7, 1909, when he left for a brief rest and never returned. With the age- and health-enfeebled Supreme Court of 1909 crippled (President William Howard Taft was to make a record-setting five appointments due to death and resignations over the course of a single year in 1910–1911), Taft urged Moody, then the youngest justice at 55, to step down. After Taft successfully lobbied Congress for a Special Act granting Moody full retirement benefits (to which he would not otherwise have qualified for),[9][10] Moody retired from the Court on November 20, 1910.[1][7]
Death and burial
Moody was not married, and had no children. He died in Haverhill, Massachusetts on July 2, 1917, at age 63,[9] and was buried at Byfield Cemetery in Georgetown, Massachusetts.
After Moody's death, some of his official papers were placed in the custody of Professor Felix Frankfurter, then of Harvard Law School. They are now in the collection of Frankfurter's papers in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress.
Moody's office furnishings and papers were donated to the Haverhill Historical Society and there is a Moody Room open to the public at the Buttonwoods Museum in Haverhill that features his personal collection.[11]
