William Henry Moody William Henry Moody ( December 23 , 1853 – July 2 , 1917 ) was an American politician and jurist , who held positions in all three branches of the Government of the United States . Biography . Born a son of farmers in Newbury , Massachusetts , Moody graduated from Phillips Academy in 1872 and from Harvard , Phi Beta Kappa in 1876 , where he was a classmate and friend of future President Theodore Roosevelt . After 4 months attending Harvard Law School , he departed and instead took the then - common but now - unusual step of reading law ( under Richard Henry Dana , Jr . ) to pass the bar . Early in his legal career , Moody first was elected city solicitor of Haverhill , Massachusetts in 1888 . After appointment as the U . S . Attorney for Eastern Massachusetts in 1890 , he gained widespread notoriety in 1893 as the junior prosecutor in the Lizzie Borden murder case . While his efforts were unsuccessful he was generally acknowledged as the most competent and effective of the attorneys on either side . He was elected to the U . S . House of Representatives from Massachusetts , and served from 1895 until 1902 where he served on the powerful Appropriations Committee . During President Theodore Roosevelt ' s administration , Moody served as the Secretary of Navy ( 1902 – 1904 ) and as Attorney General ( 1904 – 1906 ) . As Attorney General , Moody actively followed Roosevelt ' s trust - busting policies , negotiating with ' good ' trusts like U . S . Steel but prosecuting ' bad ' ones like Standard Oil . After failing to convince William Howard Taft to take the seat , on December 12 , 1906 , Roosevelt nominated Moody as an Associate Justice of the U . S . Supreme Court and Moody was confirmed December 17 , 1906 . Moody ' s service on the Court was brief but not uneventful , writing 67 opinions and 5 dissents . His most noted opinion was in the minority in " Employers Liability Cases " ( 1908 ) , where he held that Congress ' power to regulate interstate commerce included the ability to legislate management ' s relationship with employees . While he generally supported enhanced federal powers , opinions as " Twining v . New Jersey " ( 1908 ) , where he held that the Fifth Amendment ' s protection against compulsory self - incrimination did not apply to cases presented in state courts , made him hard to pigeonhole . He also wrote for a unanimous court in the famous case of " Louisville & Nashville Railroad Co . v . Mottley " , which limited federal question jurisdiction to cases in which the plaintiff ' s cause of action was based on federal law . By 1908 , Moody suffered severe rheumatism . This affected Moody to such an extent that his last sitting on the bench was May 7 , 1909 , when he left for a brief rest and never returned . With the age - and health - enfeebled Supreme Court of 1909 crippled ( President William Howard Taft was to make a record - setting 5 appointments due to death and resignations over a course of a single year in 1910 – 1911 ) , Taft urged Moody , then the youngest justice at 55 , to step down . After Taft successfully lobbied Congress for a Special Act to grant Moody retirement benefits not normally granted unless justices reached age 70 or 10 years of service ( enacted June 23 , 1910 ) , Moody retired from the Court on November 20 , 1910 . He died in Haverhill , Massachusetts , July 2 , 1917 . After Moody ' s death , some of his official papers were placed in the custody of Professor Felix Frankfurter , then of Harvard Law School . They are now in the collection of Frankfurter ' s papers in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress . Legacy . USS " Moody " ( DD - 277 ) was named for him .