William Moody
Moody as Attorney General c. 1905
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
In office December 17, 1906 – November 20, 1910[1]
Nominated by	Theodore Roosevelt
Preceded by	Henry Brown
Succeeded by	Joseph Lamar
45th United States Attorney General
In office July 1, 1904 – December 12, 1906
President	Theodore Roosevelt
Preceded by	Philander Knox
Succeeded by	Charles Bonaparte
35th United States Secretary of the Navy
In office May 1, 1902 – June 30, 1904
President	Theodore Roosevelt
Preceded by	John Davis Long
Succeeded by	Paul Morton
Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromMassachusetts's6th district
In office November 5, 1895 – May 1, 1902
Preceded by	William Cogswell
Succeeded by	Augustus Peabody Gardner
District Attorney forEssex County, Massachusetts
In office 1890–1895
Preceded by	Henry F. Hurlburt
Succeeded by	Alden P. White
Personal details
Born	William Henry Moody (1853-12-23)December 23, 1853 Newbury, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	July 2, 1917(1917-07-02) (aged 63) Haverhill, Massachusetts, U.S.
Party	Republican
Education	Harvard University (BA)

William Henry Moody (December 23, 1853 – July 2, 1917) was an American politician andjurist who held positions in all three branches of theGovernment of the United States. He represented parts ofEssex County,Massachusetts in theUnited States House of Representatives from 1895 until 1902. He then served in the cabinet of PresidentTheodore Roosevelt as Secretary of the Navy and Attorney General before Roosevelt appointed him to theUnited States Supreme Court in 1906. He retired from the Court for health reasons after a brief tenure of just less than four years. Aprogressive like Roosevelt, he opposed racial segregation and spoke out in favor of African-American civil rights.^[2]

Moody was born inNewbury, Massachusetts, the son of Henry Lord Moody and Melissa Augusta (Emerson) Moody. His father owned and managed several farms, and Moody attended the local schools of Newbury, Salem, and Danvers. All of his immigrant ancestors came toMassachusetts fromEngland, and they all came as part of the Puritan migration from England. All of them arrived between 1620 and 1640.^[3] He graduated fromPhillips Academy in 1872 andHarvard University,Phi Beta Kappa in 1876.^[4] After four months attendingHarvard Law School, he began tostudy law in the office ofRichard Henry Dana Jr., and attainedadmission to the Massachusetts bar in 1878.

Early in his legal career, Moody first was elected city solicitor ofHaverhill, 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 theLizzie Borden murder case. While his efforts were unsuccessful he was generally acknowledged as the most competent and effective of the attorneys on either side.

He was elected to theU.S. House of Representatives fromMassachusetts, and served from 1895 to 1902. He served on the powerfulAppropriations Committee, and also held seats on Insular Affairs, Expenditures in the Department of Justice, and the Joint Commission on the Transportation of the Mails. He was a candidate to succeedThomas B. Reed asSpeaker in 1899, but the post was won byDavid B. Henderson.

During PresidentTheodore Roosevelt's administration, Moody served as theSecretary 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 theGuantanamo Bay Naval Base.

Moody served asAttorney 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 theLynching of Paul Reed and Will Cato, Moody refused to grant permission for an indictment, believing no federal right had been violated.^[6]

Rooseveltnominated Moody as anassociate justice of the United States Supreme Court on December 3, 1906, to a seat vacated byHenry B. Brown.^[7] He was confirmed by theU.S. Senate on December 12, 1906,^[8] and wassworn into office on December 17, 1906.^[1]

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 theEmployers 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 asTwining v. New Jersey (1908), where he held that theFifth Amendment's protection against compulsory self-incrimination did not apply to cases presented instate courts, made him hard to pigeonhole. He also wrote for a unanimous Court in the famous case ofLouisville & Nashville Railroad Co. v. Mottley, which limitedfederal question jurisdiction to cases in which theplaintiff'scause of action was based on federal law.

By 1908, Moody suffered severerheumatism. 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 (PresidentWilliam 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]

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 inGeorgetown, Massachusetts.

In 1904, Moody received thehonorary degree ofLL.D. fromTufts University andAmherst College.

After Moody's death, some of his official papers were placed in the custody of ProfessorFelix Frankfurter, then ofHarvard Law School. They are now in the collection of Frankfurter's papers in the Manuscript Division of theLibrary 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]

USSMoody (DD-277) was named for him.

In 2018, television and film actorJay Huguley portrayed Moody inLizzie, a biographical thriller film aboutLizzie Borden.

• List of justices of the Supreme Court of the United States

• Gould, Lewis L. "Moody, William Henry";American National Biography Online February 2000.
• Heffron, Paul T. "Theodore Roosevelt and the Appointment of Mr. Justice Moody."Vanderbilt Law Review 18 (1964): 545+online.
• Watts Jr., James F. "William Moody," inThe Justices of the United States Supreme Court 1789–1969, ed. Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel (1969),

• The Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum owns 12 Moody letters dated 1896–1908.

• United States Congress."William Henry Moody (id: M000883)".Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
•  This article incorporatespublic domain material fromBiographical Directory of the United States Congress.Federal government of the United States.
•  This article incorporates text from thepublic domainDictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.

• 1853 births
• 1917 deaths
• 20th-century American judges
• Harvard University alumni
• Massachusetts lawyers
• Phillips Academy alumni
• Republican Party United States representatives from Massachusetts
• Theodore Roosevelt administration cabinet members
• Attorneys general of the United States
• United States federal judges appointed by Theodore Roosevelt
• United States secretaries of the navy
• Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States
• United States federal judges admitted to the practice of law by reading law
• District attorneys in Essex County, Massachusetts
• 19th-century United States representatives
• 20th-century United States representatives

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