Melville Fuller

Melville Weston Fuller (February 11, 1833 – July 4, 1910) was an American politician, lawyer, and judge from Maine. He was the eighth Chief Justice of the United States from 1888 to 1910.

Melville Fuller
8th Chief Justice of the United States
In office July 20, 1888 – July 4, 1910
Nominated by	Grover Cleveland
Preceded by	Morrison Waite
Succeeded by	Edward Douglass White
Member of the Illinois House of Representatives from the 60th district
In office January 5, 1863 – January 2, 1865
Succeeded by	Edward S. Isham
Personal details
Born	Melville Weston Fuller February 11, 1833 Augusta, Maine, U.S.
Died	July 4, 1910 (aged 77) Sorrento, Maine, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Calista Reynolds ​ ​ (m. 1858; died 1864)​ Mary Coolbaugh ​ (m. 1866)​
Children	6
Education	Bowdoin College (BA, MA)
Signature

Born in Augusta, Maine, he established a legal practice in Chicago after graduating from Bowdoin College. He also served as a newspaper editor and managed Democrat Stephen A. Douglas's campaign in the 1860 presidential election. During the Civil War, he served a single term in the Illinois House of Representatives, and political opponents would later claim that he was an anti-war Copperhead. Fuller became a prominent attorney in Chicago and was a delegate to several Democratic national conventions.

He declined several appointments offered by President Grover Cleveland before accepting the nomination to succeed Morrison Waite as Chief Justice. Despite some opposition to the nomination, Fuller won Senate confirmation in 1888. In 1893, he declined Cleveland's offer to serve as Secretary of State. He served as Chief Justice until his death in 1910. Fuller was, after Roger Taney, the second (with Harlan F. Stone and Fred Vinson as third and fourth) to be appointed Chief Justice by a Democratic president.

As Chief Justice of the Fuller Court, he presided over several important cases. In Plessy v. Ferguson, the court articulated the doctrine of separate but equal and upheld Jim Crow laws. His opinion in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. struck down the federal income tax provision of the Wilson–Gorman Tariff Act. The decision was later superseded by the Sixteenth Amendment. Fuller's opinion in United States v. E. C. Knight Co. narrowly interpreted the Sherman Antitrust Act, making government prosecution of antitrust cases more difficult.

Early life and education

Fuller was born in Augusta, Maine, the son of Catherine Martin (Weston) and Frederick Augustus Fuller.[1] Both his maternal grandfather, Nathan Weston and paternal grandfather, Henry Weld Fuller were judges. His father was a well-known lawyer. His parents divorced shortly after his birth, and he was raised by Nathan Weston. He attended college at Harvard University for one year before graduating from Bowdoin College, Phi Beta Kappa[2] in 1853. He then spent six months at Harvard Law School, leaving without graduating in 1855.

Career

Law practice

Fuller first studied law under the direction of an uncle. In 1855, he went into partnership with another uncle. He also became the editor of The Age, a leading Democratic newspaper in Augusta, Maine. Soon he got tired of Maine and moved to Chicago. In 1860, he managed Democrat Stephen Douglas' campaign for the Presidency of the United States

At the time, Chicago was becoming the gateway to the West. Railroads had just linked it to the east. Fuller built a law practice in Chicago. Within two years, he appeared before the Supreme Court of Illinois in the case of Beach v. Derby. He became a leading attorney in the city. He first appeared before the United States Supreme Court in the case of Traders' Bank v. Campbell. He also argued the case of Tappan v. the Merchants' National Bank of Chicago, which was the first case heard by Chief Justice Morrison Waite, whom he would later replace.

Politics

He was a minor figure in Illinois politics. He spent one term in the Illinois House of Representatives from 1863 to 1865, and was a delegate to the Illinois Constitutional Convention in 1862, and to the national Democratic Conventions of 1864, 1872, 1876, and 1880. In 1876, he made the nominating speech for Thomas Hendricks, for the Democratic nomination for president. After his inauguration as president, Grover Cleveland tried to make Fuller chairman of the United States Civil Service Commission, but he declined. Cleveland then tried to persuade Fuller to accept appointment as Solicitor General of the United States, but Fuller again declined. In 1886, Fuller was president of the Illinois State Bar Association.

Chief Justice

Fuller's Chief Justice nomination

On April 30, 1888, President Grover Cleveland nominated him for the chief justice position following the death of Morrison R. Waite. Fuller was not the first man to be mentioned as a possible Supreme Court nominee; the former ambassador to Great Britain, Edward J. Phelps, was perceived as the front-runner for the nomination, but declined because he thought that as a former Minister to England, his nomination might be looked on unfavorably by Irish-Americans, a major Democratic Party constituency.

Fuller's nomination was tepidly received in the Senate. He had avoided military service during the Civil War, and while serving in the Illinois House of Representatives had attempted to block wartime legislation proposed by Governor Richard Yates. Republicans thus launched a smear campaign against Fuller, portraying him as a Copperhead—an anti-war Democrat—and publishing a tract claiming that "The records of the Illinois legislature of 1863 are black with Mr. Fuller's unworthy and unpatriotic conduct."[3] However, he was eventually confirmed by the United States Senate on July 20, 1888, by a vote of 41 to 20, with nine Republicans voting with the Democrats to confirm him. He received his commission the same day.[4] Fuller did not take the oath of office until October 8, 1888.[5][6][7]

Chief Justice Fuller administering the oath to William McKinley as president in 1897. Outgoing president Grover Cleveland stands to the right.

On the bench, he oversaw a number of memorable or important opinions. The famous phrase "Equal Justice Under Law" paraphrases his opinion in Caldwell v. Texas, 137 U.S. 692 (1891) where Fuller discussed "equal and impartial justice under the law."[8][9] The equally famous (and much criticized) phrase "separate but equal," allowing segregation in the South, was made famous by the Fuller Court case Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), though the actual phrase was "equal but separate".

The Court under Fuller declared the income tax law unconstitutional in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co., 157 U.S. 429.[10] In Western Union Telegraph Company v. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 128 U.S. 39[11] the Court ruled that states could not tax interstate telegraph messages.

The Court through his opinion struck a blow against government antitrust legislation with the 1895 case United States v. E. C. Knight Co..[12] In Fuller's majority decision, the court found that the refining of sugar by a company within the boundaries of one state could not be held to be in restraint of interstate commerce under the terms of the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, regardless of the product's final market share. (E.C. Knight Company's owner, the American Sugar Refining Company, controlled more than 90% of sugar production at the time).

On immigration, Fuller, speaking for the court, ruled in the case of Gonzales v. Williams (192 U.S. 1, 1904),[13] that under the immigration laws Puerto Ricans were not aliens, and therefore could not be denied entry into the United States. The Court however declined to declare that Puerto Ricans were U.S. citizens. The question of the citizenship status of the inhabitants of the new island territories, their situation remained confusing, ambiguous, and contested. Puerto Ricans came to be known as something in between: "noncitizen nationals".[14]

In this famous immigration case, Isabel Gonzalez arrived from Puerto Rico at Ellis Island in August 1902. Immigration Commissioner William Williams held her as an "illegal" with plans to deport Gonzalez back to San Juan, Puerto Rico. She appealed her case, whereby the Court ruled in favor of Gonzalez and allowed her to remain in the US. Fuller's opinion did not go so far as to claim that she was automatically a US citizen, however, he recognized that Puerto Rico was a territory of the US (as of the 1898 Spanish–American War), and therefore Gonzales had the right to remain in the US. This paved the way for future Puerto Ricans to freely immigrate to the US. Later, in 1917, the Jones–Shafroth Act, which provided even more immigration and citizenship rights to Puerto Ricans, was passed by Congress.

Foreign affairs

In 1893, Fuller turned down an offer from President-Elect Grover Cleveland to serve as Secretary of State.

He also served on the Arbitration Commission in Paris in 1899 to resolve a boundary dispute between the United Kingdom and Venezuela.

Personal life

He was said to closely resemble Mark Twain. Once, the humorist was stopped on the street by a passerby requesting the Chief Justice's autograph. Twain supposedly wrote:

It is delicious to be full, but it is heavenly to be Fuller. I am cordially yours, Melville W. Fuller.

He was married twice. He married Calista Reynolds in 1858; she died in 1864. He married Mary Coolbaugh, the daughter of banker William F. Coolbaugh, in 1866. He had six daughters.

Horace Williams Fuller, editor of the lighthearted legal magazine, The Green Bag, was a cousin.[15] He died in Sorrento, Maine, and his remains are interred at Graceland Cemetery.[16][17]

Legacy

According to one study, while on the Supreme Court, Fuller voted in favor of civil rights for blacks in 15.15% (5 of 33) of the cases before him and voted in favor of civil rights for Asian Americans in 24.14% (7 of 29) of cases before him. Both percentages were below the average for the Supreme Court as a whole.[18]

As Chief Justice, he administered the oath of office to five Presidents (Benjamin Harrison, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft).

See also

• Demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States
• Fuller Park, a community area of Chicago, named for him.
• List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States
• List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States
• List of United States Chief Justices by time in office

References

1. Hatch, Louis Clinton (1919). Maine: A History (Centennial Edition), Biographical volume. New York: The American Historical Society. p. 15. Retrieved September 12, 2014.
2. Supreme Court Justices Who Are Phi Beta Kappa Members Archived 2011-09-28 at the Wayback Machine, Phi Beta Kappa website, accessed Oct 4, 2009
3. Rehnquist, William H. Centennial Crisis: The Disputed Election of 1876. Vintage Publications, 2004. p. 226.
4. "Federal Judicial Center: Melville Fuller". December 12, 2009. Retrieved May 21, 2012.
5. Ely, James W. (1995). The Chief Justiceship of Melville W. Fuller, 1888–1910 (Chief Justiceships of the United States Supreme Court). University of South Carolina Press. p. 24. ISBN 978-1-57003-018-5. Retrieved May 22, 2012.
6. "Oaths of Office Taken by the Chief Justices". Supreme Court of the United States. Retrieved May 22, 2012.
7. "Melville W. Fuller Biography". Oyez Project U.S. Supreme Court media. Retrieved May 22, 2012.
8. Caldwell v. Texas, 137 U. S. 692 (1891) at supreme.justia.com
9. Cabraser, Elizabeth. "The Essentials of Democratic Mass Litigation", Columbia Journal of Law & Social Problems, Vol. 45, p. 499 (Summer 2012).
10. Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co., 157 U. S. 429 (1895) at supreme.justia.com
11. Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Pennsylvania, 128 U. S. 39 (1888) at supreme.justia.com
12. United States v. E. C. Knight Co., 156 U. S. 1 (1895) at supreme.justia.com
13. Text of Gonzales v. Williams at Wikisource.
14. Gonzales v. Williams, 192 U. S. 1 (1904) at supreme.justia.com
15. Charles C. Soule, "The First Editor of 'The Green Bag'", The Green Bag (December, 1901), Vol. XIII., No. 12., p. 551–552.
16. "Christensen, George A. (1983) Here Lies the Supreme Court: Gravesites of the Justices, Yearbook". Archived from the original on September 3, 2005. Retrieved November 24, 2013. Supreme Court Historical Society at Internet Archive.
17. See also, Christensen, George A., "Here Lies the Supreme Court: Revisited", Journal of Supreme Court History, Volume 33, Issue 1, pp. 17–41 (19 Feb 2008), University of Alabama.
18. The First Justice Harlan by the Numbers: Just How Great was "The Great Dissenter?" 32 Akron L. Rev. 629 (1999)

• Melville Weston Fuller at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.

Further reading

• Abraham, Henry J. (1992). Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-506557-3.
• Cushman, Clare (2001). The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies, 1789–1995 (2nd ed.). (Supreme Court Historical Society, Congressional Quarterly Books). ISBN 1-56802-126-7.
• Ely, James W. (1995). The Chief Justiceship of Melville W. Fuller, 1888-1910. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. ISBN 1-57003-018-9.
• Frank, John P. (1995). Friedman, Leon; Israel, Fred L. (eds.). The Justices of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and Major Opinions. Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN 0-7910-1377-4.
• Furer, Howard B., ed. (1986). The Fuller Court, 1888-1910. (The Supreme Court in American Life Series). New York: Associated Faculty Press, Inc. ISBN 978-0-86733-060-1..
• Hall, Kermit L., ed. (1992). The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505835-6.
• King, Willard L. (1950). Melville Weston Fuller: Chief Justice of the United States 1888-1910. New York: The Macmillan Company.
• Martin, Fenton S.; Goehlert, Robert U. (1990). The U.S. Supreme Court: A Bibliography. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Books. ISBN 0-87187-554-3.
• Urofsky, Melvin I. (1994). The Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical Dictionary. New York: Garland Publishing. pp. 590. ISBN 0-8153-1176-1.

External links

• Ariens, Michael, Melville Fuller.
• Supreme Court Historical Society:
  • Melville Weston Fuller, 1888-1910.
  • The Fuller Court 1888–1910.
• Oyez Project Melville W. Fuller Biography, U.S. Supreme Court media.
• Orth, John V. Answers.com Melville Fuller.
• Reed, Lawrence W. (March 10, 2006), Melville W. Fuller: A Model Chief Justice Mackinac Center for Public Policy.