Murphy, Frank (b. William Francis Murphy, Sand [now Harbor] Beach, Mich., 13 Apr. 1890; d. Detroit, Mich, 19 July 1949; interred Rock Falls Cemetery, Harbor Beach, Mich.), associate justice, 1940–1949. A leading
New Deal politician and libertarian jurist, Frank Murphy came from an Irish‐Catholic, middle‐class family in a small town by Lake Huron. His father, a lawyer, and especially his mother filled him with intense idealism, ambition, and religious faith. After earning a law degree from the University of Michigan and serving as an army captain in France during World War I, he made his mark in Detroit. He was a private practitioner and assistant U.S. attorney (1921–1922), liberal judge on Recorder's Court (1924–1930), and crusading mayor (1930–1933) who pioneered public relief for the unemployed.
During the Depression he reached national prominence as a Progressive reformer and lieutenant of President Franklin D.
Roosevelt. He was the last U.S. governor‐general and first high commissioner of the Philippine Islands (1933–1936). As governor of Michigan (1937–1938), he mediated without loss of life the great sit‐down strikes at General Motors and other factories, a pivotal turn in unionization of mass‐production industries. Defeated for reelection, he was U.S. attorney general (1939) until chosen to replace Pierce
Butler in the Supreme Court's “Catholic seat.” The midwestern Democrat was confirmed easily as FDR's fifth and majority appointment, although many lawyers, judges, and Murphy himself felt he was miscast.
His record as a justice was mixed. Neither legal scholar nor craftsman, he was criticized for relying on heart over head, results over legal reasoning, clerks over hard work, and emotional solos over team play in what he called the Great Pulpit. His strengths were practical experience, moral courage, compassion, and devotion to human rights. He strongly supported the post‐1937 legal revolution by which the Roosevelt Court legitimated vast public power to regulate economic affairs and championed less material rights of individuals and politically impotent minorities. Although others led these historic shifts, Murphy wrote important majority opinions in
labor law, notably
Thornhill v. Alabama (1940), which included peaceful picketing as free speech. His influential
Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942) opinion, by contrast, excluded “fighting words” and obscenity. He spoke for the Court in internally divisive battles over deportation (
Schneiderman v. United States, 1943) and portal‐to‐portal pay (
Jewell Ridge v. Local No. 6167, U.M.W.A., 1945). Most memorable are his powerful dissents against “legalization of racism” in the Japanese relocation (
Korematsu v. United States, 1944) and for high standards of criminal procedure in war crime trials (
In re Yamashita, 1946), state cases (
Adamson v. California, 1947), and searches and seizures (
Wolf v. Colorado, 1949).
A complex, narcissistic bachelor, he was a priestly jurist whose support of African‐Americans, aliens, criminals, dissenters, Jehovah's Witnesses, Native Americans, women, workers, and other outsiders evoked a pun: “tempering justice with Murphy.” As he wrote in
Falbo v. United States (1944), “The law knows no finer hour than when it cuts through formal concepts and transitory emotions to protect unpopular citizens against discrimination and persecution” (p. 561). Aiding the poor and promoting industrial peace in the Great Depression were major achievements; his civil liberties evangelism was often vindicated by later decisions of the Court.
Bibliography
Sidney Fine , Frank Murphy, 3 vols. (1975–1984).
J. Woodford Howard, Jr. , Mr. Justice Murphy: A Political Biography (1968).
J. Woodford Howard, Jr.
