Moody, William Henry

Moody, William Henry (b. Newbury, Mass., 23 Dec. 1853; d. Haverhill, Mass., 2 July 1917; interred Newburyport Cemetery, Newburyport, Mass.), associate justice, 1906–1910. Born to Henry L. and Melissa A. (Emerson) Moody on a two‐hundred‐year‐old homestead, William came to embody the strong sense of duty and moral rectitude associated with his Puritan forebearers. Graduating from Phillips Andover Academy in 1872, Moody received a B.A. in history from Harvard College in 1876 but stayed only four months at its law school before reading law in Boston for eighteen months under lawyer and author Richard H. Dana, Jr. Despite this abbreviated study, Moody was admitted to the bar after making a legendary impression on his oral examiners.

Moving to Essex County and into law partnerships, Moody became a member of the Haverhill school board, a city solicitor (1888–1889), and a member of the city water board before being chosen in 1890 as attorney for the Eastern District of Massachusetts. In this capacity, he helped in the brilliant but unsuccessful murder prosecution of Lizzie Borden. Moody in 1895 won election to Congress as a Republican and was subsequently reelected three times.

Theodore Roosevelt first met Moody in 1895 and quickly came to admire a man with a similar physical build, athletic interests, and a progressive Republican perspective. In 1902, Roosevelt appointed Moody as secretary of the navy.

When Philander C. Knox resigned in 1904, Roosevelt chose Moody for attorney general. He became known for vigorous prosecutions under the Sherman Antitrust Act, particularly in the Beef Trust Case of *Swift and Co. v. United States (1905), which Moody argued personally. Moody also took a case of African‐American peonage to the Supreme Court and initiated contempt proceedings against a Tennessee sheriff who had permitted the lynching of a black rape suspect.

Roosevelt nominated Moody in 1906 to replace retiring Justice Henry B. Brown. Despite some misgivings that Moody's antitrust stance had been somewhat radical, the Senate quickly approved him. Moody's judicial career showed great promise, but it was effectively ended in 1908 when he developed crippling rheumatism. Moody spent his declining years in his house at Haverhill with his sister who, like himself, was unmarried. In 1910, Moody resigned after Congress passed legislation extending special retirement benefits to him.

While on the Court, Moody wrote sixty‐seven opinions, of which five were dissents. Writing his most important dissent in the Employers' Liability Cases (1908), Moody voted to uphold federal legislation protecting employees in interstate commerce, a stance indicative of a broad view of governmental powers. Moody's most famous opinion was in Twining v. New Jersey (1908), where he refused to apply the privilege against self‐incrimination to the states. Though since overturned, Twining is still recognized as a model of legal reasoning and of deference to federalism.

Bibliography

Frederick B. Wiener , The Life and Judicial Career of William Henry Moody (Thesis, Harvard Law School, 1930).

John R. Vile