Fuller, Melville Weston

▪ chief justice of United States

born Feb. 11, 1833, Augusta, Maine, U.S.

died July 4, 1910, Sorrento, Maine

 eighth chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (1888–1910), whose amiability, impartiality, and rare administrative skill enabled him to manage court conferences efficiently and to resolve or forestall serious disputes among the justices whom he superintended. Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Samuel F. Miller, two outstanding members of the Fuller court, called him the best presiding judge they had ever known.

      Graduated from Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine (1853), Fuller attended Harvard Law School briefly, was a newspaperman in Augusta for a time, was admitted to the bar in 1855, and from 1856 practiced law in Chicago. He was elected as a Democrat to the Illinois Constitutional Convention of 1861 and to the State House of Representatives in 1862.

 Prominent at the Chicago bar but unknown nationally, Fuller was appointed chief justice by Pres. Grover Cleveland in 1888. He successfully administered a court that comprised such justices as Holmes, Miller, Stephen J. Field, Joseph P. Bradley, and John Marshall Harlan, all of whom overshadowed him in either intelligence or forcefulness. He wrote two important opinions, both in 1895: E.C. Knight Co. (United States v. E.C. Knight Company), in which he construed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 so narrowly as to prevent its application to almost any business except transportation; and Farmers' Loan and Trust Co. (Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Company), in which he declared the federal income tax law of 1894 unconstitutional.

      While serving as chief justice, Fuller also was an arbitrator of the Venezuelan boundary dispute between that nation and Great Britain (1897–99) and a member of the Hague Court of International Arbitration (1900–10).

Additional Reading

Willard L. King, Melville Weston Fuller, Chief Justice of the United States, 1888–1910 (1950, reissued 1967), is a biography. Howard B. Furer, The Fuller Court, 1888–1910 (1986, reissued 1995); and James W. Ely, Jr., The Chief Justiceship of Melville W. Fuller, 1888–1910 (1995), examine his work as chief justice.

* * *