Frank Murphy

William Francis Murphy, known as Frank Murphy, lived from April 13, 1890 to July 19, 1949 and was an American politician, lawyer and jurist from Harbor Beach, Michigan, named to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1940 after a career that included serving as United States Attorney General, the thirty fifth governor of Michigan and mayor of Detroit, as well as the last American Governor-General and first High Commissioner to the Philippines. He graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in 1914, served in the Army during World War I, and worked as a federal attorney and trial judge before serving as mayor of Detroit from 1930 to 1933, a term for which a 1993 panel of scholars ranked him among the ten best mayors in American history. He served as Governor-General of the Philippine Islands starting in 1933, then won election as governor of Michigan in 1936 before losing reelection in 1938 and accepting appointment as United States Attorney General. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him to the Supreme Court in 1940 to fill the vacancy left by the death of Pierce Butler, and he served until his own death in 1949, succeeded by Tom C. Clark. Murphy wrote the Courts majority opinions in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire and SEC v. W. J. Howey Co., and a dissent in Korematsu v. United States.