Francis Biddle

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Francis Biddle (1935)
Francis Biddle (far right) as judge at the Nuremberg Trials with (from left) Iona Nikittschenko , Norman Birkett and Geoffrey Lawrence .

Francis Beverley Biddle (born May 9, 1886 in Paris , † October 4, 1968 in Hyannis , Massachusetts ) was a judge in the United States . After the end of World War II, he was the main US judge at the Nuremberg Trials .

Biddle was one of four sons of Algernon Biddle, a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania ; his great-great-grandfather was Edmund Randolph . Biddle first attended the Groton School in Massachusetts. In 1909 he graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts and in 1911 a law degree. After college, Biddle served as the private secretary to Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes at the United States Supreme Court . He then spent 27 years as a practicing lawyer in Philadelphia .

In 1935, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt nominated him to chair the National Labor Relations Board . In 1939, Biddle succeeded Joseph Buffington as a third judge on the federal appeals court . After a year he left and was appointed United States Solicitor General .

He did not stay long in this office either. Roosevelt appointed Biddle to the position of Attorney General of the United States in 1941 . He held this position until June 1945, at the request of President Harry S. Truman he resigned after Roosevelt's death. Shortly afterwards, Truman appointed him judge at the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg Trials . In 1963, Biddle was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Francis Biddle was married to the poet Katherine Garrison Chapin . With her he had two sons, Edmund Randolph Biddle and Garrison Chapin.

literature

  • Lemma Biddle, Francis Beverley in: John Arthur Garraty, [Ed.]: American national biography , Vol. 2, pp. 729-730 New York [u. a.]: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999 ISBN 0-19-512781-1

Web links

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