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The Riddle of Frank Murphy's Personality and Jurisprudence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 December 2018
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- Review Essays
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- Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 1988
References
1 Gressman, E., The Controversial Image of Mr. Justice Murphy, 47 Geo. L.J. 631 (1959).Google Scholar
2 J. Woodford Howard, Jr., Mr. Justice Murphy: A Political Biography 479, 485 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 Id. at 470–71, 476–77, 486.Google Scholar
4 Gressman, , 47 Geo. L.J., at 634.Google Scholar
5 The volumes in Fine's biography of Murphy are referred to hereinafter as The Detroit Years, The New Deal Years, and The Washington Years. Except for Albert J. Beveridge's The Life of John Marshal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1916–19), Fine's Murphy is the longest biography of a Supreme Court justice.Google Scholar
6 Fine, The Detroit Years at 197; The Washington Years at 9, 238. H. Lasswell, Psychopathology and Politics 78–79, 124–26 (New York: Viking Press, 1960).Google Scholar
7 Fine, The Washington Years at 9–10, 236, 595–96. “Poor Frank Murphy,” wrote Felix Frankfurter to Harold Laski soon after Murphy's death. “He was a strange mixture of mystic aspirations and as extreme a case of self-love as 1 have experienced.” Quoted in id. at 261.Google Scholar
8 Fine, the Detroit Years at 117, 197–98, 226; The New Deal Years at 2; The Washington Years at 139, 195, 214. 238.Google Scholar
9 Quoted in id. at 10; The Detroit Years at 197.Google Scholar
10 Quoted in The Detroit Years at 8.Google Scholar
11 Quoted in id. at 6.Google Scholar
12 Quoted in id.Google Scholar
13 Quoted in id. at 6–7. Murphy reciprocated his mother's intense love. When he was in his 20s and 30s, he would at times wake up at night crying for his mother, and when he was in France during World War I, he wrote her letters that can be described only as love letters. Fine says that Murphy never entirely freed himself of his Oedipal fantasy. Id. at 69. J. Woodford Howard wrote in his biography of Murphy: “Maternal influences [on Murphy] … were so strong that one prominent psychiatrist who examined him in midcareer diagnosed Murphy as having as pronounced an Oedipus complex as any patient in his experience.” Howard, Mr. Justice Murphy, at 8 (cited in note 2). Murphy never married. No woman, says Fine, could successfully compete with his mother; moreover, Murphy saw marriage “in some way, as a betrayal and renunciation of his mother and as unwanted loosening of the bonds of affection that tied him so closely with her.” The Detroit Years at 9.Google Scholar
14 Id. at 10.Google Scholar
15 Id.Google Scholar
16 Id. at 197.Google Scholar
17 Fine, The New Deal Years at 288.Google Scholar
18 Id.Google Scholar
19 The Washington Years at 9. See Lasswell, Psychopathology and Politics, at 125–26 (cited in note 6).Google Scholar
20 The Washington Years at 238.Google Scholar
21 H. Hirsch, The Enigma of Felix Frankfurter (1981).Google Scholar
22 K. Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth at 194 (1950); S. Freud, On Narcissism: An Introduction, 4 Collected Papers 51–53 (1949).Google Scholar
23 Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth, at 194.Google Scholar
24 Howard, Mr. Justice Murphy, at 5 (cited in note 2).Google Scholar
25 Governor Murphy and Governor Earle, Fortune, June 1937, at 79. See also The New Deal Years at 288.Google Scholar
26 Murphy to Frankfurter, 1945, Box 86, Felix Frankfurter Papers, Library of Congress.Google Scholar
27 Quoted in The Detroit Years at 23.Google Scholar
28 Gressman, 47 Geo. L.J. 631, 637–39 (cited in note 1); The Washington Years at 389.Google Scholar
29 Id. at 372.Google Scholar
30 Quored in Cressman, 47 Geo. L.J. at 639–40. See also The Washington Years at 259–60.Google Scholar
31 Black, H., Mr. Justice Murphy, , 48 Mich. L. Rev. 739 (1950).Google Scholar
32 Howard, Mr. Justice Murphy, at 485 (cited in note 2).Google Scholar
33 The Washington Years at 134.Google Scholar
34 Id. at 237–39, 591, 593. Murphy's colleague Rutledge also sought to do justice in each case. Irving Brandt described Rutledge's approach in deciding cases: “When the opposing briefs of litigants came before him, he studied them to determine if possible on which side justice lay. If that was clear, he searched the law for a legitimate means of rendering justice. It was usually possible, he said, to find a route that satisfied both the requirements of the case and sound principles of law.” Introduction in F. Harper, Justice Rutledge and the Bright Constitution xii (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965).Google Scholar
35 The Washington Years at 166.Google Scholar
36 Quoted in Howard, Mr. Justice Murphy, at 263.Google Scholar
37 Id. When Murphy did not follow his conscience, he usually regretted it. Examples are his votes in Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 US. 586 (1940), and Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81 (1943). In both cases, he began writing dissenting opinions but was persuaded to join the majorities. He later recanted both votes. See West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943) and Korematsu v. United States, 323 US. 214 (1944).Google Scholar
38 J. Lash, ed., From the Diaries of Felix Frankfurter 257–59 (New York: Norton, 1975) Fine writes in The Washington Years at 417: “If Frankfurter reported their conversation accurately and if Murphy was not simply trying to annoy his colleague, he deserves criticism for placing his ‘instincts’ above his view of the law”.Google Scholar
39 Schneiderman v. United States, 320 US. 118 (1943).Google Scholar
40 329 US. 459 (1947).Google Scholar
41 Draft opinion, Box 171, Harold Hitz Burton Papers, Library of Congress.Google Scholar
42 Quoted in The Washington Years at 166–67.Google Scholar
43 Id at 167.Google Scholar
44 Id. at 400.Google Scholar
45 Murphy to Black, 1945, Box 6, Hugo L. Black Papers, Library of Congress.Google Scholar
46 Quoted in The Washington Years at 237. In 1943, Murphy rold one of his law clerks: “[T]here is no … interest that I seek to serve other than the common good.” Id.Google Scholar
47 Id. at 484.Google Scholar
48 Quoted in Howard, Mr. Justice Murphy, at 485 (cited in note 2).Google Scholar
49 Murphy would have agreed with Piero Calamandrei, who wrote in Eulogy of]u&a (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1942) at 85: “[T]here are judges whose moral sensibilities are greater than their intellectual prowess, who intuitively grasp the just solution of the conflict although they lack the dialectical agility necessary to demonstrate it.”.Google Scholar
50 The unanimous decision overruled is More v. Illinois Central R.R., 312 U.S. 630 (1941). The nonunanimous decisions overruled are Minersville School Dist. v. Gobitis, 310 US. 586 (1940); Reitz v. Mealey, 314 US. 33 (1941); Goldman v. United Stares, 316 US. 129 (1942); Betts v. Brady, 316 U.S. 455 (1942); Magnolia Petroleum Co. v. Hunt, 320 US. 430 (1943); Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co., 322 U.S. 238 (1944); Comm'r v. Wilcox, 327 US. 404 (1946); Husr v. Moore-McCormick Lines, 328 US. 707 (1946); Joseph v. Carter 6. Weeks Co., 330 US. 422 (1947); Harris v. United States, 331 U.S. 145 (1947); Adamson v. California 332 U.S. 46 (1947); Wade v. Mayo, 334 U.S. 672 (1948); Trupiano v. US., 334 US. 699 (1948); MacDougall v. Green, 335 US. 281 (1948); Goesaert v. Cleary, 335 U.S. 464 (1948); Int'l Union v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Bd., 336 US. 245 (1949); Wolf v. Colorado, 338 US. 25 (1949). The case in which Murphy's dissent is best known-Koremarsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944)- perhaps should also be counted.Google Scholar
51 The total numher of dissenting votes for each of those justices during 1940–48 terms- the full terms of Murphy's service on the Supreme Court-are Douglas, 238; Frankfurter, 211; Black, 202; Murphy, 198; Reed, 143. C. Herman Pritchett, The Roosevelt Court 38–43 (New York: Macmillan, 1948); Civil Liberties and the Vinson Court 181 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954). Hence Murphy's high number of dissenting votes in overruled cases is not the result of a dissenting rate that was higher than most of his colleagues'.Google Scholar
52 Interview with William O. Douglas by Walter F. Murphy, Transcript, 144–45, Princeton University Library.Google Scholar
53 W. O. Douglas, The Court Years 26 (New York: Random House, 1980).Google Scholar