Coordinates	37°46′45.48″N122°25′9.12″N
Name	Frank Murphy
Office	Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
Termstart	January 18, 1940
Termend	July 19, 1949
Nominator	Franklin D. Roosevelt
Predecessor	Pierce Butler
Successor	Tom C. Clark
Order2	56th
Office2	United States Attorney General
Termstart2	January 2, 1939
Termend2	January 18, 1940
Predecessor2	Homer S. Cummings
Successor2	Robert H. Jackson
Order4	35th
Office4	Governor of Michigan
Term start4	January 1, 1937
Term end4	January 1, 1939
Lieutenant4	Leo J. Nowicki
Predecessor4	Frank Fitzgerald
Successor4	Frank Fitzgerald
Order5	1st
Office5	High Commissioner of the Philippines
Term start5	1935
Term end5	1936
Predecessor5	(post made)
Successor5	Paul V. McNutt
Order6	72nd
Office6	Governor-General of the Philippines
Term start6	July 15, 1933
Term end6	November 15, 1935
Predecessor6	Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.
Successor6	(post abolished): Manuel L. Quezon as the President of the Philippine Commonwealth|President of the Philippines
Birth date	April 13, 1890
Birth place	Harbor Beach, Michigan
Death date	July 19, 1949
Death place	Detroit, Michigan
Spouse	none
Party	Democratic
Religion	Roman Catholic
Alma mater	University of Michigan Law SchoolTrinity College, Dublin
Branch	United States Army
Rank	Captain
Battles	World War IWorld War II }}

William Francis (Frank) Murphy (April 13, 1890 July 19, 1949) was a politician and jurist from Michigan. He served as First Assistant U.S. District Attorney, Eastern Michigan District (1920–23), Recorder's Court Judge, Detroit (1923–30). Mayor of Detroit (1930–33), the last Governor-General of the Philippines (1933–35), U.S. High Commissioner of the Philippines (1935–36), the 35th Governor of Michigan (1937–39), United States Attorney General (1939–40), and United States Supreme Court Associate Justice (1940–49).

Early life

Murphy was born in Harbor Beach, Michigan, then known as "Sand Beach", in 1890. His Irish parents, John T. Murphy and Mary Brennan, raised him as a devout Catholic. He followed in his father’s footsteps by becoming a lawyer. He attended the University of Michigan Law School, and graduated with a BA in 1912 and LLB in 1914. He was a member of the senior society Michigamua. Murphy was stricken with Diphtheria in the winter of 1911 but was allowed to begin his course in the Law Department from which he received his LL.B. degree in 1914. He performed graduate work at Lincoln's Inn in London and Trinity College, Dublin, which was said to be formative for his judicial philosophy. He developed a need to decide cases based on his more holistic notions of justice, eschewing technical legal arguments. As one commentator wrote of his later supreme court service, he "tempered justice with Murphy."

He served in the U.S. Army during World War I, achieving the rank of Captain with the occupation Army in Germany before leaving the service in 1919.

Murphy opened a private law office in Detroit and soon became the Chief Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. He opened the first civil rights section of a U.S. Attorney's office.

He taught at the University of Detroit for five years.

Murphy served as a Judge in the Detroit Recorder's Court from 1923 to 1930, and made many administrative reforms in the operations of the court.

While on Recorder's Court, he established a reputation as a trial judge. He was a presiding judge in the famous murder trials of Dr. Ossian Sweet and his brother, Henry Sweet in 1925 and 1926. Clarence Darrow, then one of the most prominent trial lawyers in the country, was lead counsel for the defense. After an initial mistrial of all of the black defendants, Henry Sweet – who admitted that he fired the weapon which killed a member of the mob surrounding Dr. Sweet's home and was retried separately – was acquitted by an all-white jury on grounds of the right of self-defense. The prosecution then elected to not prosecute any of the remaining defendants. Murphy's rulings were material to the outcome of the case.

U.S. Attorney Eastern District of Michigan (1919–1922)

Murphy was appointed and took the oath of office as first assistant United States attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan on August 9, 1919. He was one of three assistant attorneys in the office.

When Murphy began his career as a federal attorney, the workload of the attorney's office was increasing at a rapid rate, mainly due to the advent of national prohibition. The government's excellent record in winning convictions in the Eastern District was partially due to Murphy's record of winning all but one of the cases that he prosecuted. Murphy practiced law privately to a limited extent while he was still a federal attorney. He resigned his position as a United States attorney on March 1, 1922. Murphy had several offers to join private practices but decided to go it alone and formed a partnership with Edward G. Kemp.

Recorder's Court (1923–1930)

He ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat for the United States Congress in 1920, when national and state Republicans swept Michigan. He drew upon his legal reputation and growing political connections to win a seat on the Recorder's Court, Detroit's criminal court. In 1923, Murphy was elected judge of the Recorder's Court on a non-partisan ticket by one of the largest majorities ever cast for a judge in Detroit. Murphy took office on January 1, 1924 and served seven years during the Prohibition Era.

Mayor of Detroit (1930–1933)

In 1930, Murphy ran as a Democrat and was elected Mayor of Detroit. He served from 1930 to 1933, during the first years of the Great Depression. He presided over an epidemic of urban unemployment, a crisis in which 100,000 people were unemployed in the summer of 1931. He named an unemployment committee of private citizens from businesses, churches, and labor and social service organizations to identify all residents who were unemployed and not receiving welfare benefits. The Mayor’s Unemployment Committee raised funds for its relief effort and worked to distribute food and clothing to the needy, and a Legal Aid Subcommittee volunteered to assist with the legal problems of needy clients. In 1933, Murphy convened in Detroit and organized the first convention of the United States Conference of Mayors. They met and conferred with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Murphy was elected its first president.

Murphy was an early and enthusiastic supporter of Roosevelt and the New Deal, helping Roosevelt to become the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state of Michigan.

Melvin G. Holli rated Murphy an exemplary mayor and highly effective leader.

Governor-General of the Philippines (1933–1935)

By 1933, after Murphy’s second mayoral term, the reward of a big government job was waiting. Roosevelt appointed Murphy as Governor-General of the Philippines.

Murphy demonstrated sympathy for Filipino masses, especially for the land-hungry and oppressed tenant farmers, and emphasized the need for social justice.

High Commissioner to the Philippines (1935–1936)

When his position as Governor-General was abolished in 1935, he stayed on as United States High Commissioner until 1936. That year he served as a delegate from the Philippine Islands to the Democratic National Convention.

High Commissioner to the Philippines was the title of the personal representative of the President of the United States to the Commonwealth of the Philippines during the period 1935–1946. The office was created by the Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934, which provided for a period of transition from direct American rule to the complete independence of the islands on July 4, 1946.

Governor of Michigan (1937–1939)

Murphy was elected the 35th Governor of Michigan on November 3, 1936, defeating Republican incumbent Frank Fitzgerald, and served one two-year term. During his two years in office, an unemployment compensation system was instituted and mental health programs were improved.

The United Automobile Workers engaged in an historic sit-down strike at the General Motors' Flint plant. The Flint Sit-Down Strike was a turning point in national collective bargaining and labor policy. After 27 people were injured in a battle between the workers and the police, including 13 strikers with gunshot wounds, Murphy sent the National Guard to protect the workers. The governor didn't follow a court's order requesting him to expel the strikers, and refused to order the guards troops to suppress the strike.

Murphy successfully mediated an agreement and end to the confrontation; G.M. recognized the U.A.W. as bargaining agent under the newly adopted National Labor Relations Act. This had an effect upon organized labor. In the next year the UAW saw its membership grow from 30,000 to 500,000 members. As later noted by the British Broadcasting System, this strike was "the strike heard round the world."

In 1938, Murphy was defeated by his predecessor, Fitzgerald, who became the only governor from Michigan to succeed and precede the same person.

Attorney General of the United States (1939–1940)

In 1939, Roosevelt appointed Murphy the 56th Attorney General of the United States. Murphy established a Civil Liberties Section in the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice. The section was designed to centralize enforcement responsibility for the Bill of Rights and civil rights statutes.

Supreme Court

After a year as Attorney General, on January 4, 1940, Murphy was nominated by Roosevelt to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, filling a seat vacated by Pierce Butler. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on January 16 and was sworn in on January 18. and the Harlan Fiske Stone courts. Upon the death of Chief Justice Stone, Murphy served in the court led by Frederick Moore Vinson, who was confirmed in 1946.

Murphy took an expansive view of individual liberties, and the limitations on government he found in the Bill of Rights.

Murphy authored 199 opinions: 131 majority, 68 in dissent.

Opinions differ about him and his jurisprudential philosophy. He has been acclaimed as a legal scholar and a champion of the common man. Justice Felix Frankfurter disparagingly nicknamed Murphy "the Saint", criticizing his decisions as being rooted more in passion than reason. It has been said he was "Neither legal scholar nor craftsman" who was criticized "for relying on heart over head, results over legal reasoning, clerks over hard work, and emotional solos over team play."

Murphy's 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)

According to Frankfurter, Murphy was part of the more liberal "Axis" of justices on the Court, along with Justices Rutledge, Douglas, and Black; the group would for years oppose Frankfurter's judicially-restrained ideology. Douglas, Murphy, and then Rutledge were the first justices to agree with Hugo Black's notion that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporated the Bill of Rights protection into it; this view would later become law.

Murphy is perhaps most well known for his vehement dissent from the court's ruling in Korematsu v. United States, which upheld the constitutionality of the government's internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Murphy sharply criticized the majority ruling as "legalization of racism."

Though Murphy was serving on the Supreme Court during World War II, he still longed to be part of the war effort. Consequently, during recesses of the Court, he served in Fort Benning, Georgia as an infantry officer.

On January 30, 1944, almost exactly one year before Allied liberation of the Auschwitz death camp on January 27, 1945, Justice Murphy unveiled the formation of the National Committee Against Nazi Persecution and Extermination of the Jews. Serving as committee chair, he stated it was created to combat Nazi propaganda "breeding the germs of hatred against Jews." The announcement was made on the 11th anniversary of Adolf Hitler becoming Chancellor of Germany. The eleven committee members included U.S. Vice President Henry Wallace, 1940 Republican presidential candidate Wendell Wilkie and Henry St. George Tucker, Presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church.

He acted as chairman of the National Committee against Nazi Persecution and Extermination of the Jews and of the Philippine War Relief Committee. The first committee was established in early 1944 to promote rescue of European Jews, and to combat antisemitism in the United States.

Death and legacy

Murphy died at fifty-nine of coronary thrombosis during his sleep at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. Over 10,000 people attended his funeral in Detroit. He was engaged to be married in August to Joan Cuddihy.

His remains are interred at Our Lady of Lake Huron Cemetery of Harbor Beach, Michigan. The Frank Murphy Hall of Justice was home to Detroit's Recorder's Court and now houses part of Michigan's Third Judicial Circuit Court. There is a plaque in his honor on the first floor, which is recognized as a Michigan Legal Milestone.

Outside the Hall of Justice is Carl Milles's statue "The Hand of God". This rendition was cast in honor of Murphy. It features a nude figure emerging from the left hand of God. Although commissioned in 1949 and completed by 1953, the work, partly because of the male nudity involved, was kept in storage for a decade and a half. The work was chosen in tribute to Murphy by Walter P. Reuther and Ira W. Jayne. It was placed on a pedestal in 1970 with the help of sculptor Marshall Fredericks, who was a Milles student.

Murphy's personal and official files are archived at the Bentley Historical Library of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and are open for research. This also includes an oral history project about Murphy. His correspondence and other official documents are deposited in libraries around the country.

In memory of Murphy, one of three University of Michigan Law School alumni to become a U.S. Supreme Court justice, Washington D.C.-based attorney John H. Pickering, who was a law clerk for Murphy, donated a large sum of money to the law school as a remembrance, establishing the Frank Murphy Seminar Room.

Murphy was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Law degree by the University of Michigan in 1939.

The University of Detroit has a Frank Murphy Honor Society.

''The Sweet Trials: Malice Aforethought'' is a play written by Arthur Beer, based on the trials of Ossian and Henry Sweet, and derived from Kevin Boyle's ''Arc of Justice''.

The Detroit Public Schools named Frank Murphy Elementary in his honor.

See also

References

;General

Boyle, Kevin, ''Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age'' (Henry Holt & Company, New York: 2004). (National Book Award Winner for non-fiction, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award) ISBN 0805079335; ISBN 978-0805079333.

Fine, Sidney, ''Frank Murphy: The Detroit Years''. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975) 618 pages. ISBN 0472329499.

Fine, Sidney, ''Frank Murphy. 3 vols.'' (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975–1984). ISBN 0472329499, ISBN 9780472329496.

Holli, Melvin G., ''The American Mayor: The Best & The Worst Big-City Leaders.'' (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999.) xi + 210 pp. Photographs, appendices, notes, and index. ISBN 978-0-271-01877-5; ISBN 0-271-01876-3.

Howard, J. Woodford, ''Mr. Justice Murphy: A Political Biography.'' (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968).

;Specific

Further reading

Abraham, Henry J. ''Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court. 3d. ed.'' (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). ISBN 0-19-506557-3.

Frank Murphy, American National Biography.

Ariens, Michael, ''Supreme Court Justices, Frank Murphy (1890–1949)''.

Arnold, Thurman Wesley. "Mr. Justice Murphy." 63 Harvard Law Review 289 (1949).

Bak, Richard, "(Frank) Murphy's Law", ''Hour Detroit'', September 2008.

Baulch, Vivian M. and Zacharias, Patricia, Rearview Mirror, ''The Historic 1936–37 Flint Auto Plant Strike'', ''The Detroit News''.

Barnet, Vincent M., Jr. "Mr. Justice Murphy, Civil Liberties and the Holmes' Tradition." 32 Cornell Law Quarterly 177 (1946).

Bibliography and Biography, William Francis "Frank" Murphy, 6th Circuit United States Court of Appeals.

''Biographical Dictionary of the Federal Judiciary.'' Detroit: Gale Research, 1976.

Black, Hugo L., "Mr. Justice Murphy." 48 Michigan Law Review 739 (1950).

Cushman, Clare. ''The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies,1789–1995'' (2nd ed.) (Supreme Court Historical Society), (Congressional Quarterly Books, 2001) ISBN 1568021267; ISBN 9781568021263.

"Frank Murphy, Dictionary of American Biography.

Fine, Sidney, ''Frank Murphy, Michigan's 35th Governor'', Archives of Michigan.

Fine, Sidney, ''Frank Murphy in World War I''. (Ann Arbor: Michigan Historical Collections, 1968) Photos, 44 pp.

Fine, Sidney, ''Frank Murphy: The New Deal Years''. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979) ISBN 0226249344; ISBN 9780226249346; ISBN 0226658716.

Fine, Sidney, ''Frank Murphy. Volume 3, The Washington Years'' (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984) ISBN 0472100467.

Fine, Sidney, ''Sit-down: The General Motors Strike of 1936–1937''. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1969). ISBN 9780472329489; ISBN 0472329480; ISBN 039511778X.

Frank, John P., ''The Justices of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and Major Opinions'' 5 vols.,(Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel, editors) (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1995) ISBN 0791013774, ISBN 978-0791013779.

Friend, Theodore, ''Between Two Empires: The Ordeal of the Philippines, 1929–1946'' (1965).

Hall, Kermit L. (2005) "Murphy, Frank." ''The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States''. Oxford Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press 1150 pp. ISBN 9780641997792; ISBN 0641997795.

Hall, Kermit L., ed. ''The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.,ISBN 0195058356; ISBN 9780195058352.

Howard, J. Woodford, Jr., ''Mr. Justice Murphy: A Political Biography'' (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press: 1968).

Lopez, Ian F. Haney, ''A nation of minorities: race, ethnicity, and reactionary colorblindness'', Stanford Law Review, February 1, 2007.

Lunt, Richard D., ''The High Ministry of Government: The Political Career of Frank Murphy'' (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1965) (PhD diss. University of New Mexico).

Marshall, Thurgood. "Mr. Justice Murphy and Civil Rights." 48 Michigan Law Review 745 (1950).

Martin, Fenton S. and Goehlert, Robert U., ''The U.S. Supreme Court: A Bibliography'', (Congressional Quarterly Books, 1990). ISBN 0871875543.

Maveal, Gary, "Michigan Lawyers in History – Justice Frank Murphy, Michigan’s Leading Citizen," 79 ''Michigan Bar Journal'' 368 (March 2000).

Nawrocki, Dennis Alan, ''Art in Detroit Public Places'', (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1980). pg. 63, biographical material on Frank Murphy.

Norris, Harold, ''Mr. Justice Murphy and the Bill of Rights''. (Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana Publications, Inc., 1965). Ossian Sweet Murder Trial Scrapbook, 1925. Scrapbook and photocopy of the November 1925 murder trial of Ossian Sweet. Clarke Historical Library, Central Michigan University.

Roche, John P. "Mr. Justice Murphy", ''Mr. Justice'', Dunham, Allison and Kurland, Philip B., eds., 281–317. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956, rev. ed. 1964).

St. Antoine, Theodore J., ''Justice Frank Murphy and American labor law'', Michigan Law Review (100 MLR 1900, June 1, 2002).

Toms, Robert, Speech on the Sweet murder trials upon retirement of the prosecuting attorney in 1960, Clarke Historical Library, Central Michigan University.

Tushnet, Mark, ed. (2008) ''I Dissent: Great Opposing Opinions in Landmark Supreme Court Cases'', Malaysia: Beacon Press, pp. 256, ISBN 978-080700036-6.

Urofsky, Melvin I., ''Division and Discord: The Supreme Court under Stone and Vinson, 1941–1953'' (University of South Carolina Press, 1997) ISBN 1570031207.

Urofsky, Melvin I., ''The Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical Dictionary'' (New York: Garland Publishing 1994). 590 pp. ISBN 0815311761; ISBN 978-0815311768.

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Vine, Phyllis. ''One Man's Castle: Clarence Darrow in Defense of the American Dream.'' (New York: Amistad, 2005). ISBN 9780066214153.

.

External links

Frank Murphy quotations a few at "Brainy Quote".

Gubernatorial photographic portrait of Frank Murphy, Michigan archives.

National Governors Association, Frank Murphy Biography.

Photograph, Franklin Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt and Frank Murphy, Virtual Detroit, ''The Detroit News''.

Political Graveyard, Frank Murphy.

The Sweet Trials University of Detroit Mercy.

The Sweet Trials home page, Famous American Trials, University of Missouri, Kansas City.

''Time Magazine'' cover, Frank Murphy, August 28, 1939.

United States Conference of Mayors on Frank Murphy

United States Department of Justice, Biographies of U.S. Attorneys General, Frank Murphy.

{{U.S. Secretary box | before = Homer S. Cummings | after = Robert H. Jackson | years = 1939–1940 | president = Franklin D. Roosevelt | department = Attorney General}} July 19, 1949}}

Category:1890 births Category:1949 deaths Category:American military personnel of World War I Category:American military personnel of World War II Category:United States Army officers Category:American people of Irish descent Category:Michigan state court judges Category:Mayors of Detroit, Michigan Category:Governors of Michigan Category:Governors-General of the Philippines Category:American expatriates in the Philippines Category:American colonial period of the Philippines Category:American legal scholars Category:United States Attorneys General Category:United States Supreme Court justices Category:United States federal judges appointed by Franklin D. Roosevelt Category:American Roman Catholics Category:People from Huron County, Michigan Category:Legal history of Michigan Category:Michigan Democrats Category:American people of Irish descent Category:Michigan lawyers Category:University of Michigan Law School alumni Category:Alumni of Trinity College, Dublin Category:University of Detroit Mercy faculty Category:Deaths from thrombosis

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