Path to the Supreme Court
William Henry Moody prosecuted Lizzie Borden before he prosecuted the beef trust: as a young Massachusetts district attorney he delivered the opening statement in the century's most famous murder trial, and as Theodore Roosevelt's Attorney General he personally argued Swift & Co. v. United States — winning the stream-of-commerce doctrine from Holmes (§58). Congressman, Navy Secretary, Attorney General: he was TR's favorite all-purpose lieutenant, and in December 1906 Roosevelt sent him to Brown's (§52) seat on the Court, at fifty-three.
On the Supreme Court
Moody had the makings of a great justice and only two working terms to show it. Twining v. New Jersey held that the self-incrimination privilege did not bind the states — but its careful framework for what due process absorbs governed the incorporation debate for half a century, until Malloy v. Hogan overruled it in 1964. In the First Employers' Liability Cases he wrote his own long dissent defending Congress's power over railroad employment — a position vindicated within months, when Congress re-enacted the statute in the form the Court soon sustained. Then crippling rheumatoid arthritis destroyed him: he last sat in 1909, and Congress passed a special act in 1910 allowing him to retire with full benefits despite his short service. He died in 1917 — Roosevelt's great might-have-been.
The Voting Record
How Moody voted in the 470 cases the Supreme Court Database records from the 1906 term through the 1910 term, using that database’s classification of each vote as liberal or conservative. The gold tick on each bar is the rate for the other justices sitting on those same cases.
Where Moody sat among the colleagues on the same bench — and whether that Court divided clearly enough for the question to have an answer — is laid out Court by Court. See this Court →
Source · The Supreme Court Database (Spaeth, Epstein, Nelson, Martin, et al.) · how these figures are made
Key Decisions
Twining v. New Jersey
1908Holding · The Fifth Amendment self-incrimination privilege does not apply against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment.
Role · Moody wrote the 8–1 majority; Harlan (§44) dissented alone.
Its framework for what due process absorbs steered incorporation doctrine until Malloy v. Hogan (1964) overruled it.
Read the opinion →First Employers' Liability Cases
1908Holding · The Court struck the 1906 federal railroad-injury act, 5–4, as reaching employees outside interstate commerce.
Role · Moody wrote a substantial dissent defending the commerce power.
Congress promptly re-enacted the statute on Moody's terms — the FELA that still governs railroad injuries today.
Read the opinion →Go Deeper
William Henry Moody had one of the most brilliant public careers of his generation and one of the shortest tenures on the Court — a Massachusetts prosecutor turned Theodore Roosevelt's trust-busting attorney general, elevated to the bench in 1906 and driven off it by crippling rheumatism barely three years later, retired in 1910 by a special act of Congress. He has no full biography. Approach him through the Friedman & Israel chapter and the SCHS capsule life, his one notable opinion, and Fiss's Holmes Devise volume.
The Bookshelf
The fullest connected account of a career cut short. The Chelsea House chapter carries the swift ascent: the young Haverhill prosecutor who won national fame trying the Lizzie Borden case, the reform congressman, Theodore Roosevelt's Secretary of the Navy and then attorney general — the aggressive trust-buster of the Northern Securities and beef-trust prosecutions — and the 1906 appointment that TR meant as the start of a long judicial career. It ended in three years; the chapter is candid about how much promise the illness took with it.
Moody's one enduring opinion, and a landmark of the long incorporation debate. Holding that the Fifth Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination did not bind the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, Moody's opinion surveyed the whole question of which Bill of Rights guarantees the states must honor — the framework that governed until the Warren Court's incorporation revolution swept much of it away, and Twining itself was overruled in Malloy v. Hogan (1964). A brief career's one lasting mark. Free online.
The Holmes Devise volume for the tail of the Fuller Court Moody so briefly joined, and the era anchor for this shelf. Moody is a minor presence in Fiss's account, but the volume supplies the doctrinal setting for Twining and for the incorporation question that was his one real contribution. For a three-year justice, the era history carries the weight. Macmillan.
For a justice with no biography, the Supreme Court Historical Society's illustrated volume gives the reliable capsule — the Borden trial, the cabinet years, the trust-busting, the appointment, and the illness — in a few careful, well-sourced pages with a portrait. The best short, citable account of a large career and a small tenure. CQ Press for the SCHS.
The study of Moody before Washington — the Essex County prosecutor (of Lizzie Borden, among others) who became Roosevelt's favorite reformer. Heffron is the Moody scholar; this is his fullest piece on the formative career.
The standard account of the closest presidential-justice relationship of the era — TR's Navy Secretary and trust-busting Attorney General, sent to the Court in 1906 to carry the Square Deal inside. The tragedy is that illness gave him only four years.
The standard modern biographical encyclopedia of the Court: a signed essay on each of the 110 justices from Jay to Alito, alphabetically arranged, by a named scholar or journalist. Length tracks reputation — two pages for Thomas Johnson, three for Woods, eleven for Holmes — which is itself a rough map of who the literature has bothered with. It is not a substitute for a biography, and for the justices who have never had one it is often the most careful short account in print. Borrow it free at the Internet Archive.
The one-volume reference on the Court: more than a thousand signed entries on cases, doctrines, institutions and the justices, current to 2005. Cases and people share one alphabet, so a citation can be followed without changing volumes, and the biographical entries are short, written by specialists, and better than a longer sketch at carrying the historiography — what the argument about a justice currently is. Borrow it free at the Internet Archive.
The Reading Path
A researched route through the literature — in order.
- 1.The Friedman & Israel chapter — for the whole swift career — Borden trial to the bench
- 2.Twining v. New Jersey — for his one lasting opinion, at the heart of the incorporation debate
- 3.The SCHS Illustrated Biographies — for the reliable capsule life of a bookless justice
- 4.Fiss — for the late Fuller Court he briefly joined
Where the Papers Are Kept
The William H. Moody papers at the Library of Congress cover the cabinet and Court years; a thin file for a justice whose career was three-quarters over before it reached the bench. Visit →
Online Resources
Ideas for Further Research
- The special retirement act. Moody, disabled by rheumatism after barely three years, could not meet the ten-year service requirement for a pension — exactly Ward Hunt's (§42) predicament in 1882 — and Congress again passed a special act (1910) to let him retire on full pay. Two cases, twenty-eight years apart, that drove the reform of judicial retirement. Set them together as the story of how the Court solved the problem of the disabled justice.
- The career that dwarfed the tenure. Moody was arguably the most accomplished public man of his cohort at appointment — Borden prosecutor, reform congressman, Navy secretary, trust-busting attorney general — and left the least judicial mark, undone by illness. A study in contingency: what might a healthy Moody, TR's intended long-term justice, have become on the Court that decided Lochner's fate?
- The one opinion that mattered. Twining (1908) framed the incorporation question for two generations before the Warren Court answered it the other way. Trace the line from Twining through Palko (Cardozo §75, 1937) to the selective-incorporation revolution of the 1960s — the slow constitutionalizing of the Bill of Rights against the states, with Moody's brief mark near its start. Seat lineage: Henry Brown §52 → Moody → Joseph Lamar.