George Butte

George Charles Butte (born May 8, 1877 in San Francisco , † January 18, 1940 in Mexico City ) was an American politician, legal scholar and Governor General of the Philippines .

Studied and worked as a university lecturer

After studying law at Austin College and the University of Texas , from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts , Butte worked as a lawyer in Texas and Oklahoma from 1903 to 1911. He later studied law in Germany at universities from Berlin and Heidelberg and France at the “École de Droit” in Paris . In 1914 Butte became a professor at the University of Texas Law School .

In 1918 he gave up his chair and was for a short time from October 5, 1918 to March 10, 1919 Major in the United States Army and Head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Army Staff.

He then worked for the governor of Texas, William Pettus Hobby, who was in office from 1917 to 1921 . This appointed him in 1920 in the commission to draft a law for the electricity company in Texas.

He was then a professor and from 1923 to 1924 Dean of the University of Texas Law School. In 1924 he ran unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Republican Party for governor of Texas and was defeated by the Democratic Party candidate Miriam A. Ferguson . Although he was beaten, he was ten times the usual Republican score of the period. This was partly due to the fact that he was supported by renegade members of the Democratic Party, but also the Ku Klux Klan .

Puerto Rico and Philippines

In 1925 Butte became the Attorney General of Puerto Rico and remained in that office even after he was acting governor three times. He retained this office until he was appointed Special Assistant to the Minister of Justice in 1928.

On December 31, 1930, he became lieutenant governor of the Philippines. From January 9 to February 29, 1932 he was the acting Governor General of the Philippines. After resigning from this office, he was Associate Judge at the Supreme Court of the Philippines from July 1, 1932 to February 1, 1936.

Butte, who was an internationally recognized expert on colonial administration and international law, was also an honorary member for life of the Texas Bar Association and honorary president of the Puerto Rico Bar Association.

Publications

• The California Land Acquisition Question. Heidelberg and Berkeley 1913 ( digitized version )
• Great Britain and the Panama Canal. 1913
• American award jurisdiction. 1913
• Academic Freedom or “In the Spirit of 1836”. Austin 1917 ( digitized , alternative digitized )

Awards

• Doctor iuris honoris causa , 1921 Austin College

Web links

• Biography in the "Handbook of Texas"
• Biography on the homepage of the Supreme Court of the Philippines

Individual evidence

1. ^ Elections of Texas Governors, 1845-2002 ( English ) texasalmanac.com. Archived from the original on March 29, 2007. Retrieved April 20, 2019.