Francis M. Shea

Francis M. Shea (June 16, 1905 – August 8, 1989) was an American lawyer, law professor and United States government official.

Born in Manchester, New Hampshire, Francis Michael Shea (also known as Frank Shea) was a son of New Hampshire state senator and attorney Michael Shea and Margaret (Muldoon) Shea. He attended and graduated from Dartmouth College (A.B., 1925) and Harvard Law School (LL.B., 1928).

Following law school, Shea obtained, through a referral from his law school professor Felix Frankfurter, a position practicing law with a prominent attorney, John Lord O'Brian, in Buffalo, New York. From 1929-1933, Shea lived in Buffalo and practiced with the law firm of Slee, O'Brian, Hellings and Ulsh.

In 1933, Shea moved to Washington to join the New Deal. He became a lawyer in the Agriculture Adjustment Administration. During 1935-1936, he was general counsel to the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration.

In 1936, Shea returned to Buffalo and became dean of the University of Buffalo School of Law. Implementing the University Council's order to upgrade the school, Shea hired fellow Harvard graduates Louis L. Jaffe, Mark DeWolfe Howe, David Reisman, Jr. and others to join the faculty. Shea also expanded the school's library, intensified the moot court program and emphasized the casebook/Socratic, rather than the textbook/lecture, method of teaching. In 1936, the law school was admitted to the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). In 1937, the school received American Bar Association (ABA) accreditation. During Shea's tenure as dean, some began to call Buffalo Law School "Little Harvard."

In 1939, Shea was recruited by his friend from western New York State, then Solicitor General of the United States (and later U.S. Attorney General and then U.S. Supreme Court justice) Robert H. Jackson, to join the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Shea was nominated by Roosevelt and confirmed by the Senate to serve as Assistant Attorney General heading the Claims Division (today the Civil Division) in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). He served for six years, running the Division and personally arguing over 50 cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and other federal appellate courts. His Supreme Court cases included Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company v. United States (1943), regarding patents in radio broadcasting, and Federal Power Commission v. Hope Natural Gas (1944), a landmark regarding government rate-setting.

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