Melville Fuller
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Melville Fuller
Fuller in 1908
8th
Chief Justice of the United States
In office
October 8, 1888
– July 4, 1910
Nominated by
Grover Cleveland
Preceded by
Morrison Waite
Succeeded by
Edward Douglass White
Personal details
Born
Melville Weston Fuller
February 11, 1833
Augusta, Maine, U.S.
Died
July 4, 1910
(aged 77)
Sorrento, Maine, U.S.
Resting place
Graceland Cemetery,
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Political party
Spouse(s)
Democratic

Calista Reynolds



(m. 1858; died 1864)


Mary Coolbaugh



(m. 1866; died 1904)

Children
10
Education
Bowdoin College
Signature
Melville Weston Fuller (February 11, 1833 – July 4, 1910) was an
American politician, lawyer, and jurist who served as the
eighth chief justice of the United States from 1888 until his death in
1910. Staunch conservatism marked his tenure on the Supreme
Court, exhibited by his tendency to support unfettered free
enterprise and to oppose broad federal power. He wrote major
opinions on the federal income tax, the Commerce Clause, and
citizenship law, and he took part in important decisions about racial
segregation and the liberty of contract. Those rulings often faced
criticism in the decades during and after Fuller's tenure, and many
were later overruled or abrogated. The legal academy has generally
viewed Fuller negatively, although a revisionist minority has taken a
more favorable view of his jurisprudence.
Born in Augusta, Maine, Fuller established a legal practice
in Chicago after graduating from Bowdoin College. A Democrat, he
became involved in politics, campaigning for Stephen A. Douglas in
the 1860 presidential election. During the Civil War, he served a
single term in the Illinois House of Representatives, where he opposed
the policies of President Abraham Lincoln. Fuller became a
prominent attorney in Chicago and was a delegate to several
Democratic national conventions. He declined three separate
appointments offered by President Grover Cleveland before
accepting the nomination to succeed Morrison Waite as Chief Justice.
Despite some objections to his political past, Fuller
won Senate confirmation in 1888. He served as Chief Justice until
his death in 1910, gaining a reputation for collegiality and able
administration.
Fuller's jurisprudence was conservative, focusing strongly on states'
rights, limited federal power, and economic liberty. His majority
opinion in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. (1895) ruled a
federal income tax to be unconstitutional; the Sixteenth
Amendment later superseded the decision. Fuller's opinion in United
States v. E. C. Knight Co. (1895) narrowly interpreted Congress's
authority under the Commerce Clause, limiting the reach of
the Sherman Act and making government prosecution
of antitrust cases more difficult. In Lochner v. New York (1905),
Fuller agreed with the majority that the Constitution forbade states
from enforcing wage-and-hour restrictions on businesses,
contending that the Due Process Clause prevents government
infringement on one's liberty to control one's property and business
affairs. Fuller joined the majority in the now-reviled case of Plessy v.
Ferguson (1896), in which the Court articulated the doctrine
of separate but equal and upheld Jim Crow laws. He argued in
the Insular Cases that residents of the territories are entitled to
constitutional rights, but he dissented when, in United States v.
Wong Kim Ark (1898), the majority ruled in favor of birthright
citizenship.
Many of Fuller's decisions did not stand the test of time. His views on
economic liberty were squarely rejected by the Court during the New
Deal era, and the Plessy opinion was unanimously reversed in Brown
v. Board of Education (1954). Fuller's historical reputation has been
generally unfavorable, with many scholars arguing that he was
overly deferential to corporations and the wealthy. While a
resurgence of conservative legal thought has brought Fuller new
defenders, an increase in racial awareness has also led to new
scrutiny of his vote in Plessy. In 2021, Kennebec
County commissioners voted unanimously to remove a statue of
Fuller from public land, aiming to dissociate the county from racial
segregation.
Contents

1Early life

2Career

3Nomination to Supreme Court

4Chief justice

5Jurisprudence
5.1Federal power


5.1.1Income tax

5.1.2Interstate commerce

5.2Substantive due process

5.3Judicial authority

5.4Race

5.5Citizenship, immigration, and the territories

6Personal life

7Legacy

7.1Statue

8See also

9References

10External links
Early life[edit]
Melville Weston Fuller was born on February 11, 1833, in Augusta,
Maine, the second son of Frederick Augustus Fuller and his wife,
Catherine Martin (née Weston).[1]:
903
His maternal
grandfather, Nathan Weston, served on the Supreme Court of Maine,
and his paternal grandfather was a probate judge.[2]:
4
His father
practiced law in Augusta.[3]:
1471–1472
Three months after Fuller
was born, his mother sued successfully for divorce on grounds of
adultery; she and her children moved into Judge Weston's
home.[3]:
1472
In 1849, the sixteen-year-old Fuller enrolled
at Bowdoin College, from which he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in
1853.[4]:
120
He studied law in an uncle's office before spending six
months at Harvard Law School.[5]:
339
While he did not receive a
degree from Harvard, his attendance made him the first chief justice
to have received formal academic legal training.[5]:
339
Fuller was
admitted to the Maine bar in 1855 and clerked for another uncle
in Bangor.[6]:
199
Later that year, he moved back to Augusta to
become the editor of The Age, Maine's primary Democratic
newspaper, in partnership with another uncle.[7]:
30
Fuller was
elected to Augusta's common council in March 1856, serving as the
council's president and as the city solicitor.[3]:
1472
Career[edit]
In 1856, Fuller left Maine for Chicago, Illinois.[7]:
35
The city
presented Fuller, a steadfast Democrat, with greater opportunities
and a more favorable political climate.[2]:
5
In addition, a broken
engagement likely encouraged him to leave his
hometown.[7]:
32
Fuller accepted a position with a local law firm,
and he also became involved in politics.[2]:
6
Although Fuller opposed
slavery, he considered it an issue for the states rather than the
federal government.[7]:
41
He supported the Kansas–Nebraska Act,
which repealed the Missouri Compromise and allowed Kansas and
Nebraska to determine the slavery issue themselves.[7]:
42
Fuller
opposed both abolitionists and secessionists, arguing instead for
compromise.[2]:
He campaigned for Stephen A. Douglas both in his
6
successful 1858 Senate campaign against Abraham Lincoln and in
his unsuccessful bid against Lincoln in the 1860 presidential
election.[6]:
199
When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, Fuller supported
military action against the Confederacy.[2]:
6
However, he opposed
the Lincoln Administration's handling of the war, and he decried
many of Lincoln's actions as unconstitutional.[6]:
199
Fuller was
elected as a Democratic delegate to the failed 1862 Illinois
constitutional convention.[2]:
7
He helped develop
a gerrymandered system for congressional apportionment, and he
joined his fellow Democrats in supporting provisions that prohibited
African-Americans from voting or settling in the state.[2]:
7
He also
advocated for court reform and for banning banks from printing of
paper money.[2]:
7
Although the convention adopted many of his
proposals, voters rejected the proposed constitution in June
1862.[2]:
7
In November 1862, Fuller was narrowly elected to a seat in
the Illinois House of Representatives as a Democrat.[2]:
8
The
majority-Democrat legislature clashed with Republican
governor Richard Yates and opposed the wartime policies of
President Lincoln.[2]:
8
Fuller spoke in opposition to
the Emancipation Proclamation, arguing that it violated state
sovereignty.[7]:
55–56
He supported the Corwin Amendment, which
would have prevented the federal government from outlawing
slavery.[2]:
8
Fuller opposed Lincoln's decision to suspend the writ
of habeas corpus, believing it violated civil liberties.[2]:
8
Yates
ultimately adjourned the legislature over the vehement objections of
Fuller and the Democrats.[7]:
56
The frustrated Fuller never sought
legislative office again, although he continued taking part in
Democratic party politics.[2]:
9
Advertisement for Fuller's law practice, printed in the Chicago Tribune, May 4, 1860
Fuller maintained a successful legal practice, arguing on behalf of
many corporations and businessmen.[2]:
11
He represented the city
of Chicago in a land dispute with the Illinois Central
Railroad.[2]:
11
In 1869, he took on what became his most
significant case: defending Chicago clergyman Charles E. Cheney,
whom the Episcopal Church was attempting to remove because he
disagreed with church teaching on baptismal regeneration.[7]:
70
69–
Believing the ecclesiastical court to be biased against Cheney,
Fuller filed suit in Chicago Superior Court, arguing that Cheney
possessed a property right in his position.[2]:
12
The Superior Court
agreed and entered an injunction against the ecclesiastical court's
proceedings.[2]:
12
On appeal, the Supreme Court of Illinois reversed
the injunction, holding that the civil courts could not review church
disciplinary proceedings.[7]:
70
The ecclesiastical court found Cheney
guilty, but he refused to leave his pulpit.[2]:
12
The matter returned
to the courts, where Fuller argued that only the local congregation
had the right to remove Cheney.[2]:
12
The Supreme Court of Illinois
ultimately agreed, holding that the congregation's property was not
under the purview of Episcopal Church leadership.[3]:
1476
defense of Cheney garnered him national prominence.[2]:
Fuller's
13
Beginning in 1871, Fuller also litigated before the Supreme Court of
the United States, arguing numerous cases.[2]:
13
His legal practice
involved many areas of law, and he became one of Chicago's most
highly paid lawyers.[2]:
13–14
He remained involved in the politics of
the Democratic Party, serving as a delegate to the party convention
in 1872, 1876, and 1880.[2]:
Fuller supported a strict
9
construction of the U.S. Constitution.[2]:
the printing of paper money,[7]:
77
14–15
He firmly opposed
and he spoke out against the
Supreme Court's 1884 decision in Juilliard v. Greenman upholding
Congress's power to issue it.[2]:
15
He was a supporter of states'
rights and generally advocated for limited government.[2]:
16
Fuller
strongly supported President Grover Cleveland, a fellow Democrat,
who agreed with many of his views.[2]:
18
Cleveland successively
attempted to appoint Fuller to chair the United States Civil Service
Commission, to serve as Solicitor General, and to be a United States
Pacific Railway Commissioner, but Fuller declined each
nomination.[4]:
122
Nomination to Supreme Court[edit]
Fuller's chief justice nomination
On March 23, 1888, Chief Justice Morrison Waite died, creating a
Supreme Court vacancy for President Cleveland to
fill.[2]:
16
The Senate was narrowly under Republican control, so it
was necessary for Cleveland to nominate someone who could obtain
bipartisan support.[2]:
16
Cleveland also sought to appoint a
candidate who was sixty years of age or younger, since an older
nominee would likely be unable to serve for very long.[7]:
104–105
He
considered Vermont native Edward J. Phelps, the ambassador to the
United Kingdom, but the politically influential Irish-American
community, which viewed him as an Anglophile, opposed
him.[8]:
885–886
Furthermore, the sixty-six-year-old Phelps was
thought to be too old for the job, and the Supreme Court already
had one justice from New England.[7]:
106
Senator George Gray was
considered, but appointing him would create a vacancy in the closely
divided Senate.[2]:
17
Cleveland eventually decided that he wanted
to appoint someone from Illinois, both for political reasons and
because the court had no justices from the Seventh Circuit, which
included Illinois.[2]:
17
Fuller, who had become a confidant of
Cleveland, encouraged the President to appoint John Scholfield, who
served on the Illinois Supreme Court.[7]:
106–107
Cleveland offered
the position to Scholfield, but he declined, apparently because his
wife was too rustic for urban life in Washington, D.C.[7]:
107
Fuller
was considered because of the efforts of his friends, many of whom
had written letters to Cleveland in support of him.[7]:
107–110
At
fifty-five years old, Fuller was young enough for the position, and
Cleveland approved of his reputation and political
views.[7]:
108, 111
In addition, Illinois Republican senator Shelby
Cullom expressed support, convincing Cleveland that Fuller would
likely receive bipartisan support in the Senate.[7]:
112
Cleveland thus
offered Fuller the nomination, which he accepted reluctantly.[9]:
114
Fuller was formally nominated on April 30.[2]:
113–
18
Public reaction to Fuller's nomination was mixed: Some newspapers
lauded his character and professional career, while others criticized
his comparative obscurity and his lack of experience in the federal
government.[2]:
19–20
The nomination was referred to the Senate
Judiciary Committee, chaired by Vermont Republican George F.
Edmunds.[7]:
115
Edmunds was displeased that his friend Phelps
had not been appointed, so he delayed committee action and
endeavored to sink Fuller's nomination.[2]:
20
The Republicans seized
upon Fuller's time in the Illinois Legislature, when he had opposed
many of Lincoln's wartime policies.[7]:
116
They portrayed him as
a Copperhead – an anti-war Northern Democrat – and published a
tract claiming that "[t]he records of the Illinois legislature of 1863
are black with Mr. Fuller's unworthy and unpatriotic
conduct".[2]:
20
Some Illinois Republicans, including Lincoln's
son Robert, came to Fuller's defense, arguing that his actions were
imprudent but not an indicator of disloyalty.[2]:
117
20 [7]: 116–
Fuller's detractors claimed he would reverse the Supreme
Court's ruling in the recent legal-tender case of Juilliard; his
defenders replied he would be faithful to precedent.[2]:
20–21
Vague
allegations of professional improprieties were levied, but an
investigation failed to substantiate them.[2]:
21–22
The Judiciary
Committee took no action on the nomination, and many believed
that Edmunds was attempting to hold it off until after the 1888
presidential election.[2]:
22
Cullom demanded an immediate vote,
fearing that delay on Fuller's nomination could harm Republicans'
prospects of winning Illinois.[2]:
22
The committee reported the
nomination without recommendation on July 2, 1888.[10]:
33
The full Senate took up Fuller's nomination on
July 20.[2]:
22
Several prominent Republican senators,
including William M. Evarts of New York, William Morris Stewart of
Nevada, and Edmunds, spoke against the nomination, arguing that
Fuller was a disloyal Copperhead who would misinterpret
the Reconstruction Amendments and roll back the progress made by
the Civil War.[2]:
22
Illinois's two Republican senators, Cullom
and Charles B. Farwell, defended Fuller's actions and
character.[2]:
22
Cullom read an anti-Lincoln speech that Phelps,
Edmunds's choice for the position, had given.[7]:
120
He accused
Edmunds of hypocrisy and insincerity, saying he was simply resentful
that Phelps had not been chosen.[7]:
120
The Democratic senators
did not participate in the debate, aiming to let the Republicans
squabble among themselves.[7]:
120–121
When the matter came to a
vote, Fuller was confirmed 41 to 20, with 15 absences.[11] Ten
Republicans, including Republican National
Committee chair Matthew Quay and two senators from Fuller's
home state of Maine, joined the Democrats in supporting Fuller's
nomination.[2]:
23
Fuller took the judicial oath on October
formally becoming Chief Justice of the United States.[2]:
Chief justice[edit]
See also: Fuller Court
8, 1888,
24 [12]
Chief Justice Fuller (left) administering the oath to William McKinley (center)
as president on March 4, 1897. Outgoing president Grover Cleveland stands to the
right.
Fuller served twenty-two years as chief justice, remaining in the
center chair until his death in 1910.[13] Although he lacked legal
genius, his potent administrative skills made him a capable manager
of the court's business.[4]:
123 [14]: 372
Hoping to increase the Court's
collegiality, Fuller introduced the practice of the justices' shaking
hands before their private conferences.[15]:
223
He successfully
maintained more-or-less cordial relationships among the justices,
many of whom had large egos and difficult tempers.[16]:
61–63
His
collegiality notwithstanding, Fuller presided over a divided court: the
justices split 5–4 sixty-four times during his tenure, more often
than in subsequent years.[17]:
43
Fuller himself, however, wrote few
dissents, disagreeing with the majority in only 2.3 percent of
cases.[16]:
63
Fuller was the first chief justice to lobby Congress
directly in support of legislation, successfully urging the adoption of
the Circuit Courts of Appeals Act of 1891.[4]:
134
The act
established intermediate appellate courts, which reduced the
Supreme Court's substantial backlog and allowed it to decide cases in
a timely manner.[4]:
134–135
As chief justice, Fuller was generally
responsible for assigning the authorship of the court's majority
opinions.[18]:
He tended to use this power
1499–1500
modestly,[17]:
43
often assigning major cases to other justices while
retaining duller ones for himself.[3]:
1480
According to legal
historian Walter F. Pratt, Fuller's writing style was
"nondescript";[19]:
219
his opinions were lengthy and contained
numerous quotations.[16]:
61
Justice Felix Frankfurter opined that
Fuller was "not a[n] opinion writer whom you read for literary
enjoyment",[8]:
889
while the scholar G. Edward
White characterized his style as "diffident and not altogether
successful".[18]:
1497–1498
In 1893, Cleveland offered to appoint Fuller to be secretary of
state.[15]:
224
He declined, saying he enjoyed his work as chief justice
and contending that accepting a political appointment would harm
the Supreme Court's reputation for impartiality.[17]:
45
Remaining
on the Court, he accepted a seat on an 1897 commission to
arbitrate the Venezuelan boundary dispute, and he served ten years
on the Permanent Court of Arbitration.[15]:
declined after 1900,[6]:
201
224
Fuller's health
and scholar David Garrow suggests
that his "growing enfeeblement" inhibited his work.[20]:
1012
In what
biographer Willard King calls "[p]erhaps the worst year in the history
of the Court" – the term from October 1909 to May 1910 – two
justices died and one became fully incapacitated; Fuller's weakened
state compounded the problem.[7]:
July.[7]:
309
309
Fuller died that
President William Howard Taft nominated Associate
Justice Edward Douglass White to replace him.[16]:
67–68
Jurisprudence[edit]
See also: List of United States Supreme Court cases by the Fuller
Court
Fuller's jurisprudence is generally identified as conservative.[2]:
2 [17]: 41
1–
He favored states' rights over federal power, attempting to
prevent the national government from asserting broad control over
economic matters.[21]:
42
Yet he was also skeptical of the states'
powers: he agreed with the concept of substantive due process and
used it to strike down state laws that, in his view, unduly encroached
upon the free market.[3]:
1481–1482 [21]: 42–43
Fuller took no
interest in preventing racial inequality, although his views on other
civil rights issues were less definitive.[14]:
372
Much of Fuller's
jurisprudence has not stood the test of time: many of his decisions
have been reversed by Congress or overruled by later Supreme Court
majorities.[17]:
41
Summarizing Fuller's views of the law, scholar
Irving Schiffman wrote in 1969 that "he was a
conservative, laissez-faire Justice, less reactionary than some of his
brethren, more compassionate than others, but a spokesman for
what now seems a far-off and bygone judicial age".[3]:
1481
Federal power[edit]
Income tax[edit]
See also: Income tax in the United States
In this 1895 political cartoon, Fuller is depicted placing a dunce cap with the words
"INCOME TAX DECISION" on President Cleveland, who had signed the tax into law. The
cartoon appeared in the Judge magazine; it was accompanied by a quote from
Senator David B. Hill praising the Court's decision.
According to legal scholar Bernard Schwartz, Fuller's most
noteworthy decision was his 1895 opinion in Pollock v. Farmers'
Loan & Trust Co.[22]:
184
In 1894, Congress passed the Wilson–
Gorman Tariff Act, which contained a rider that levied a
two-percent tax on incomes exceeding $4000 a year.[23]:
285
Since
it imposed the nation's first peacetime income tax, this provision was
deeply controversial, provoking acrimonious debate along geographic,
societal, and political lines.[2]:
117–118
Its challengers took the tax to
court, where they argued that it was a direct tax that had not been
apportioned evenly among the states, in violation of a provision of
the Constitution.[3]:
1487
(In practice, apportioning income tax by
state would be impossible, so a ruling on this basis would doom
federal income taxes.[2]:
118
) When the matter reached the Supreme
Court, it unexpectedly agreed with the challengers and, by a 5–4
vote, struck down the income tax.[24]:
805
The majority opinion,
written by Fuller, held that the Framers intended the term "direct
tax" to include property and that income was itself a form of
property.[25]:
200–203
unconstitutional.[26]:
Fuller thus ruled the entire act to be
68
The decision provoked withering criticism
from each of the four dissenters, including a paroxysm of ire by
Justice John Marshall Harlan that one scholar characterized as "one
of the most spectacular displays ever staged by a member of the
Court".[3]:
1487 [26]: 68–69
Harlan wrote that the decision "strikes at
the very foundation of national authority", while Justice Henry
Billings Brown opined it "approaches the proportion of a national
calamity".[26]:
68–69
Each dissenter decried the majority's perceived
infidelity to precedent.[27]:
162, 173
The Pollock decision was distinctly unpopular.[28]:
173
Much of the
public questioned whether Fuller's constitutional analysis was truly in
good faith: many felt that the Court was more committed to
protecting the wealthy than to following any particular legal
philosophy.[5]:
346
Former Oregon governor Sylvester
Pennoyer even called for the impeachment of the justices in the
majority.[24]:
806
While the public outcry soon waned, support for a
federal income tax grew substantially in subsequent
years.[29]:
64
The Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,
ratified in 1913, abrogated Pollock by allowing Congress to levy
income taxes without apportionment;[30]:
1723
it marked only the
third time in American history that a Supreme Court decision was
reversed via constitutional amendment.[29]:
59
However, the
Supreme Court has never formally overruled Pollock's reasoning; to
the contrary, Chief Justice John Roberts cited it in the
2012 Affordable Care Act case National Federation of Independent
Business v. Sebelius.[24]:
813
Law professor Erik M. Jensen noted in
2014 that most legal academics agree that Pollock was "obviously
dead wrong";[24]:
scholar Calvin H. Johnson called the decision
807
"a terrible example of judicial bad behavior" that should be "reverse[d]
in full".[30]:
1734
with Pollock[24]:
Jensen takes a minority position, agreeing
807
and extending it to argue for the
unconstitutionality of flat taxes[31]:
2334, 2407–2414
and wealth
taxes.[32] In any event, Fuller's Pollock opinion remains relevant in
contemporary public policy.[33]:
8–9
Interstate commerce[edit]
Fuller was suspicious of attempts to assert broad federal power over
interstate commerce.[34]:
186
Questions about the scope of
Congress's Commerce Clause authority commonly arose in the
context of the Sherman Act, a major 1890 federal antitrust
law.[2]:
128–129
In the first such case, United States v. E. C. Knight
Co. (1895), Fuller led the Court in limiting the federal government's
powers.[35]:
154–155
The Department of Justice had filed suit under
the Sherman Act against the American Sugar Refining Company,
arguing that it was a monopoly because it controlled over ninety
percent of the American sugar refining market.[36]:
111
Writing for
an eight-justice majority, Fuller concluded Congress could not
proscribe such monopolies because they only implicated
manufacturing and thus did not fall under the Commerce
Clause.[2]:
129
Stating that "[c]ommerce succeeds to manufacture
and is not a part of it," he maintained that the sugar-refining trust
had no direct impact on interstate commerce.[37]:
373
Fuller feared
that a broader interpretation of the Commerce Clause would
impinge upon states' rights, and he thus held the Sugar Trust could
only be broken up by the states in which it operated.[2]:
130
The case
displays Fuller's tendency to support a limited federal
government.[2]:
130
The legal academy generally views Knight as an
unduly restrictive interpretation of the Commerce Clause,[37]:
367
366–
although legal scholar Richard Epstein has argued that it aligns
with founding-era precedents.[38]:
1399–1400
The Court's expansive
Commerce Clause decisions during the New Deal period essentially
abrogated Knight.[2]:
134
Fuller participated in several other major antitrust cases.[2]:
129
In
the 1904 case of Northern Securities Co. v. United States, a
majority broke up the Northern Securities Company, a
railroad holding company, believing it to be a
monopoly.[2]:
132
Fuller dissented, joining opinions written by
Justices Edward Douglass White and Oliver Wendell Holmes
Jr.[39]:
336, 341
The dissenters argued that simply holding stock in a
company did not count as interstate commerce, and so they would
have held that the Sherman Act did not apply to holding
companies.[2]:
132–133
The justices were unanimous in Swift & Co. v.
United States (1905), which gave the Court's blessing to antitrust
enforcement against meat-packing companies.[2]:
133–134
Although
meat-packing did not directly involve interstate commerce, the
Court held that the Commerce Clause still applied because the meat
products would eventually be sold across state lines.[2]:
134
133–
Citing Swift and other cases, legal historian James W. Ely has
argued that Fuller was not opposed to federal antitrust laws per se,
but only to expansive readings of the Commerce Clause.[2]:
134
In
another antitrust case, Loewe v. Lawlor (1908), Fuller wrote for a
unanimous Court that labor unions were subject to the Sherman
Act.[34]:
187
The ruling was commonly thought to evince antipathy
toward organized labor.[26]:
218–219
Its broad interpretation of the
antitrust laws appeared difficult to reconcile
with Knight,[40]:
43
and law professor David P. Currie wrote that
the apparent contradiction "suggests that [Fuller] may not have been
guided exclusively by neutral legal principles".[41]:
901
Fuller's attempts to limit the national government's power did not
always meet with the support of his fellow justices.[34]:
186
He
dissented from the Court's 1903 decision in Champion v. Ames, in
which five justices upheld a federal ban on transporting lottery
tickets across state lines.[42]:
75–76
In his opinion, Fuller demurred
that the majority's reasoning gave Congress "the absolute and
exclusive power to prohibit the transportation of anything or
anybody from one state to another.[26]:
158
He feared that the law
violated the principles of federalism and states' rights protected by
the Tenth Amendment.[43]:
47
The ruling in Ames was among the
first to grant the federal government a de facto police power to
protect the welfare of the public.[43]:
45
It proved a historically
significant step toward expanding congressional authority, and legal
scholar John Semonche wrote that by resisting it, Fuller "sought to
put his finger in the dike".[26]:
158
The chief justice also dissented
in McCray v. United States, a 1904 case that approved the use of
the federal taxing power for regulatory
purposes.[42]:
73
McCray effectively allowed Congress to regulate
intrastate commercial activity by simply levying taxes on it; the
decision curtailed Fuller's opinion in Knight and showed his support
for federalism could not always garner the support of a majority of
the Court.[2]:
140–141
Substantive due process[edit]
See also: Lochner era
Fuller in his Supreme Court chambers, circa 1899
Fuller's tenure on the Supreme Court, in the words of Schiffman,
"witnessed the final passing of judicial tolerance of legislative
experimentation and the final acceptance of the doctrine of
substantive due process".[3]:
1481
Soon after his arrival on the Court,
the chief justice began joining with his colleagues to erode the states'
powers to regulate economic activity gradually.[3]:
1481
In Chicago,
Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Co. v. Minnesota (1890), for instance,
Fuller and five other justices voted to strike down the railroad rates
set by a Minnesota commission.[36]:
108
The ruling held that the Due
Process Clause contained a substantive component that subjected the
states' regulatory decisions to judicial review.[2]:
85
With Fuller's
support, the Court in Allgeyer v. Louisiana (1897) unanimously
expanded that component, concluding the Due Process Clause
protected a right to enter into
contracts.[3]:
1482 [36]: 115
Allgeyer was the first case in the Court's
history in which a state law was struck down on
freedom-of-contract grounds,[3]:
1482
and its implications
stretched well beyond the insurance context in which it
arose.[2]:
96
According to Semonche, the decision heralded a "new
and sweeping" interpretation of the Due Process Clause "that would
haunt the Justices and American society for the next four
decades".[26]:
91
The era of substantive due process reached its zenith in the 1905
case of Lochner v. New York.[44]:
181
Lochner involved a New
York law that capped hours for bakery workers at sixty hours a
week.[45]:
520
In a decision widely viewed to be among the Supreme
Court's worst,[45]:
516
a five-justice majority held the law to be
unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause.[14]:
588–589
The
opinion, written by Justice Rufus W. Peckham and joined by Fuller,
maintained that the liberty protected by that clause included a right
to enter labor contracts without being subject to unreasonable
governmental regulation.[46]:
1496–1497
Peckham rejected the
state's argument that the law was intended to protect workers'
health, citing the "common understanding" that baking was not
unhealthy.[14]:
590
He maintained that bakers could protect their
own health, arguing that the law was in fact a labor regulation in
disguise.[2]:
98
In a now-famous dissent, Justice Holmes accused the
majority of substituting its own economic opinions for the
requirements of the Constitution.[46]:
1500
Most scholars agree that
the majority in Lochner engaged in judicial activism, substituting its
own views for those of the democratically elected branches of
government.[47]:
874
The Fuller Court was not exclusively hostile to
labor regulation: in Muller v. Oregon (1908), for example, it
unanimously upheld an Oregon law capping women's working hours
at ten hours a day.[2]:
100–101
Nonetheless, Fuller's decision to join
the majority in the Lochner case, which the Court ultimately
abandoned in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937),[45]:
541
is a
major reason for the low estimation in which history has held
him.[48]:
109
Judicial authority[edit]
Because of his support for property rights, Fuller favored a broad
conception of the judicial role, endorsing doctrinal developments
that expanded the federal courts' power to
issue injunctions.[34]:
185
In the case of In re Debs (1895), for
instance, Fuller and his fellow justices bolstered the judiciary's
authority to enjoin deprivations of public rights.[36]:
112
The case
stemmed from an 1894 strike by the American Railway
Union against the Pullman Company.[49]:
260
A Chicago federal
court issued an injunction against the union's leaders, ordering them
to stop facilitating the strike.[2]:
135 [49]: 260–261
Union
president Eugene V. Debs and other union officials defied the order,
and the court sentenced them to prison for contempt.[49]:
261
Debs
challenged the conviction before the Supreme Court, but
unanimously, it denied him relief.[50]:
102
Broadly construing the
federal government's powers, the Court held the judicial branch had
the power to enjoin anything that obstructed interstate
commerce.[49]:
labor cases,[51]:
261
The Debs case opened the door to injunctions in
49–50
and it substantially expanded the
courts' equitable authority.[36]:
112
The case of Ex parte
Young (1908) similarly demonstrated Fuller's support for extending
the courts' ability to issue injunctions.[34]:
185
The case involved
the Eleventh Amendment, which proscribes the federal courts from
hearing lawsuits brought against states.[14]:
1110
In Young, Fuller
and seven other justices endorsed a way to sidestep that prohibition:
suing an official of the state instead of the state itself.[36]:
landmark[52]:
412
128
The
decision aided the Fuller Court in its quest to
strike down state economic regulations, but its reasoning has
permitted the federal judiciary to hear challenges to state laws in a
wide variety of other contexts.[53]:
164
Although some modern
scholars have criticized the ruling in Young, attorney Rochelle
Bobroff noted in 2009 that it "remains one of the most powerful
tools to compel states to comply with federal law".[54]:
819–820
Ely
characterized the decision as "a milestone in the Fuller Court's
transformation of federal judicial power",[2]:
184
and legal
historian Edward A. Purcell Jr. said that it "helped create a newly
powerful and activist federal judiciary that emerged at the turn of
the twentieth century and continued to operate into the
twenty-first".[55]:
932
Fuller wrote the majority opinion in United States v.
Shipp (1909),[26]:
232
a singular decision in which the justices
insisted that the authority of the Court be heeded.[56]:
348
A
Tennessee court sentenced Ed Johnson, an African-American man,
to death for rape.[26]:
231
His attorneys petitioned the Supreme
Court for relief, arguing that racial bias had tainted the jury pool
and that the threat of mob violence made
the venue unfair.[26]:
231
The Court agreed to issue a stay of
execution, which prevented the death sentence from being carried
out pending a ruling on Johnson's appeal.[56]:
193–196
But John
Shipp, the sheriff, removed almost all the guards from Johnson's
prison, allowing a lynch mob to enter the jail and kill
Johnson.[26]:
231
Shipp, his deputies, and members of the mob were
charged with contempt of court on the basis that they had spurned
the Court's stay order.[2]:
185
In the only criminal trial conducted in
the Supreme Court's history,[57]:
128
determine the defendants' guilt.[58]:
the justices sat as a jury to
422–423
Fuller, writing for a
five-justice majority, found Shipp and several other defendants
guilty of contempt.[56]:
333–334
In his opinion, the chief justice
wrote Shipp had "not only made the work of the mob easy, but in
effect aided and abetted it", acting "in utter disregard of this court's
mandate and in defiance of this court's orders".[56]:
332–334
While
the decision did not signal a sudden benevolence toward civil rights
claims,[57]:
128
Mark Curriden and Leroy Phillips write it
constituted "the only proactive step the U.S. Supreme Court has ever
taken to combat mob rule directly and demand that the public
respect its authority and the authority of the rule of law".[56]:
Race[edit]
See also: Nadir of American race relations
348
The Fuller Court in 1899
In the words of legal scholar John V. Orth, Fuller "preside[d]
comfortably over a Court that turned a blind eye to racial
injustice".[14]:
372
In the infamous[59]:
15
case of Plessy v.
Ferguson (1896), he joined six of his colleagues in upholding
a Louisiana law that required the racial segregation of railroad
passengers.[60]:
321, 333 [61]: 35
The majority opinion, penned by
Justice Brown, rejected the claim that the law violated the Equal
Protection Clause, maintaining instead that "separate but equal"
distinctions were constitutional.[60]:
321 [62]: 397
Citing "the nature
of things", the majority asserted that equal protection did not
require the "commingling" of blacks and whites.[62]:
398
Brown also
argued that the Louisiana law did not suggest that blacks were
inferior,[60]:
321
stating that it was based on "the established usages,
customs and traditions of the people".[63]:
127–128
Justice Harlan
dissented, using in the process the now-famous phrase "Our
Constitution is color-blind."[64]:
10
The Plessy decision placed the
Court's imprimatur on Jim Crow laws.[65]:
24
It instituted a
half-century of what Louis H. Pollak called
"humiliation-by-law",[61]:
35
which continued until the Court
reversed course in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).[64]:
10
9–
Fuller's decision to join the majority in Plessy has contributed
significantly to his poor historical reputation.[48]:
109
The Fuller Court was no more liberal in other cases involving race: to
the contrary, it curtailed even the limited progress toward equality
made under Fuller's predecessors.[66]:
198–200
For instance, Fuller
joined the unanimous majority in Williams v. Mississippi (1898),
which rejected a challenge to poll taxes and literacy tests that in
effect disenfranchised Mississippi's African-American
population.[36]:
117
Even though a lower court had admitted the
arrangement was intended "to obstruct the exercise of suffrage by
the negro race", the Supreme Court refused to strike it down,
reasoning that the provisions passed constitutional muster because
they did not explicitly single out
African-Americans.[67]:
96
The Williams majority distanced itself
from the Court's previous ruling in Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886), in
which the Waite Court had struck down a law that, while neutral on
its face, discriminated against a racial minority.[66]:
97
199 [67]: 96–
In a 2021 book, Vernon Burton and Armand Derfner
characterized Williams as one "of the most disgraceful decisions in
Supreme Court history", writing it "abandoned Yick Wo" and "erased
the Fifteenth Amendment".[67]:
96–97
Fuller was among the seven justices who joined the majority opinion
in Berea College v. Kentucky (1908),[36]:
129
a segregation case in
which the Court refused to apply its freedom-of-contract principles
in defense of racial equality.[67]:
104–106
The decision involved the
Commonwealth of Kentucky's Day Law, which required private
colleges to segregate their students.[60]:
335, 337
In its challenge to
the statute, Berea College cited Lochner and other similar cases to
argue the law was "an arbitrary interference with the rights of the
people in the conduct of their private business and in the pursuit of
their ordinary occupations".[68]:
731 [69]: 755
Such reasoning seemed
likely to persuade the Court, given its history of striking down laws
that interfered with the business decisions of private
entities.[70]:
447–448
But the justices were not convinced, upholding
the law on the basis that, because corporations had no right to be
granted a charter, states could impose otherwise unconstitutional
restrictions on them.[60]:
337
Again dissenting, Justice Harlan
criticized the law's infringement on the economic-freedom principles
that the Court had articulated in other cases.[68]:
732
The majority's
reasoning stood in conspicuous conflict with its support for corporate
rights in other contexts[2]:
159
and Donald Lively wrote the ruling
"illuminated the evolving duality of Fourteenth Amendment
standards".[71]:
94
Citizenship, immigration, and the territories[edit]
As a result of the Spanish–American War, the United States took
control of Puerto Rico and the Philippines, raising knotty legal issues
about their status under the Constitution.[72]:
430
The Supreme
Court addressed these disputes in a series of rulings in the
so-called Insular Cases.[73]:
489
In Downes v. Bidwell (1901), a
fractured Court ruled 5–4 that the people living in the territories
were not entitled to the rights guaranteed by the
Constitution.[74]:
225–229
Fuller, writing for the four dissenters,
argued that Congress had no power to hold the territories "like a
disembodied shade" free from all constitutional limits.[75]:
792
He
contended that the Constitution could not tolerate unrestricted
congressional power over the territories, writing that it rejected that
proposition in a way "too plain and unambiguous to permit its
meaning to be thus influenced".[76]:
72
Fuller's opinion was in line
both with his strict-constructionist views and his party's opposition
to American imperialism.[2]:
176
While the Court has never adopted
Fuller's position,[74]:
182
scholars such as Juan R. Torruella have
argued that it correctly interpreted the Constitution.[76]:
73, 94–95
Fuller joined the majority in another of the Insular Cases: DeLima v.
Bidwell (1901).[3]:
1490
The Court held – again by a 5–4 vote —
that Puerto Rico did not constitute a foreign country for purposes of
federal tariff law.[75]:
793–794
Put
together, Downes and DeLima meant that the territories were
neither domestic nor foreign under American law.[75]:
795
The
Court was similarly unclear in Gonzales v. Williams (1904).[77]:
7
In
a unanimous opinion by Fuller, the Justices ruled that Puerto Ricans
were not aliens under federal law, but they refused to decide
whether the people of Puerto Rico were American
citizens.[77]:
23
In Late Corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-Day Saints v. United States (1890), a case involving
Congress's power over the Utah Territory, a six-justice majority
upheld an anti-polygamy law that dissolved the Mormon
Church's charter and seized its property.[36]:
109 [78]: 31
Fuller
penned a dissent, in which he maintained that Congress had no
authority to order the confiscation of property.[78]:
34–35
Rejecting
the majority's broader interpretation of federal power, Fuller
expressed fear that the decision would afford Congress "absolute
power" over the denizens of the territories.[2]:
178 [78]: 35
Ultimately,
Fuller's position was vindicated: Congress later passed a joint
resolution restoring the church's property.[7]:
148
Fuller was rarely amenable to the claims of Chinese
immigrants.[79]:
312
In the 1889 Chinese Exclusion Case, for
instance, he joined Justice Stephen Field's opinion[79]:
312
that
unanimously rejected a challenge to the Chinese Exclusion
Act.[80]:
31
Although treaties with China allowed for immigration,
the Court held that Congress was not bound by them, ruling that the
Act abrogated all treaty obligations to the contrary.[80]:
In Fong
31
Yue Ting v. United States (1893), a majority held Congress had total
authority over aliens and that they could be expelled on any
basis.[73]:
487–488
Three justices, including Fuller, dissented, arguing
that aliens were at least entitled to some Constitutional
protections.[81]:
14
According to Ely, Fuller's dissent shows that he
"occasionally demonstrated concern over civil liberties".[34]:
187
But
he also dissented in United States v. Wong Kim
Ark (1898),[79]:
313
in which the Court ruled that the Fourteenth
Amendment ensured birthright citizenship – automatic citizenship
for all children born on American soil.[82]:
1248–1249
Writing for
himself and Justice Harlan, Fuller claimed Chinese aliens were not
"subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States because they
retained allegiance to the Chinese emperor.[4]:
146
Based on that
fact, he concluded their children had no claim to American
citizenship.[4]:
146
The Wong Kim Ark decision has taken on
additional significance as prominent Republican politicians,
including Donald Trump, have called for the reversal of birthright
citizenship.[82]:
1187–1188
Personal life[edit]
Fuller's grave at Graceland Cemetery
Fuller was married twice, first to Calista Reynolds, whom he wed in
1858.[2]:
10
1864.[6]:
199
They had two children before she died of tuberculosis in
Fuller remarried in 1866, wedding Mary Ellen
Coolbaugh, the daughter of William F. Coolbaugh.[3]:
had an additional eight children,[1]:
until her death in 1904.[7]:
299
904
1475
The couple
and they remained married
A member of the Chicago Literary
Club, Fuller was interested in poetry and other forms of literature;
his personal library held over six thousand books.[6]:
199–200
While
at his summer home in Sorrento, Maine, Fuller died on July 4, 1910,
of a heart attack.[15]:
224
Upon hearing of his death, President Taft
praised Fuller as "a great judge"; Theodore Roosevelt said "I admired
the Chief Justice as a fearless and upright judge, and I was
exceedingly attached to him personally."[13] James E. Freeman, who
later served as the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, conducted the
funeral service.[7]:
Chicago.[14]:
Fuller was buried at Graceland Cemetery in
329
371
During his confirmation, Fuller's mustache produced what law
professor Todd Peppers called "a curious national
anxiety".[83]:
147
No Chief Justice had ever before had a mustache,
and numerous newspapers debated the propriety of Fuller's facial
hair.[83]:
142
The New York Sun praised it as "uncommonly
luxuriant and beautiful", while the Jackson Standard quipped that
"Fuller's mustache is a good quality for a Democratic politician—it
shuts his mouth."[83]:
141–143
After Fuller's confirmation,
the Sun switched course: it denounced his "deplorable moustaches",
speculating they would distract attorneys and "detract from the
dignity" of the Court.[83]:
143–144
The column triggered further
debate in the nation's newspapers, with much of the press coming to
Fuller's defense.[83]:
144
kept the mustache.[2]:
Legacy[edit]
The commentary notwithstanding, Fuller
23–24
A bust of Fuller, displayed at the U.S. Supreme Court
Fuller's time on the Supreme Court has often been roundly
criticized[48]:
109
or overlooked altogether.[84]:
150
His support of
the widely execrated Plessy and Lochner decisions has been
particularly responsible for his low historical
reputation.[48]:
overruled;[85]:
109
205
Many Fuller Court decisions were later
its positions on economic regulation and labor
fared particularly poorly.[17]:
37
Fuller's rulings were often favorable
to corporations, and some scholars have claimed that the Fuller
Court was biased towards big business and against the working
class.[86]:
148–151
Fuller wrote few consequential majority opinions,
leading Yale professor John P. Frank to remark that "[i]f the
measure of distinction is influence on the life of our own times,
Fuller's score is as close to zero as any man's could be who held his
high office so long".[85]:
202
In addition, as William Rehnquist –
himself a chief justice – noted, Fuller's more assertive colleagues
Holmes and Harlan overshadowed him in the eyes of
history.[87]:
796
Yet the Fuller Court's jurisprudence was also a key
source of the legal academy's criticism.[17]:
37
Asserting that its
justices "ignored the Fundamental Law", Princeton professor Alpheus
Mason argued that "[t]he tribunal Fuller headed was a body
dominated by fear—the fear of populists, of socialists, and
communists, of numbers, majorities and democracy".[88]:
607
However, the growth of conservative legal thought in the late 20th
century has brought Fuller new supporters.[48]:
109
A 1993 survey
of judges and legal academics found that Fuller's reputation, while
still categorized as "average", had risen from the level recorded in a
1970 assessment.[89]:
402, 428
In a 1995 book, James W. Ely
argued that the traditional criticisms of the Fuller Court are flawed,
maintaining that its decisions were based on principle instead of
partisanship.[90]:
101–102
He noted that Fuller and his fellow justices
rendered rulings that generally conformed with contemporaneous
public opinion.[2]:
213–214
Both Bruce Ackerman and Howard
Gillman defended the Fuller Court on similar grounds, arguing that
the justices' decisions fit in with the era's zeitgeist.[91]:
47
Lawrence
Reed of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy wrote in 2006 that
Fuller was "a model Chief Justice", favorably citing his economic
jurisprudence.[92] While these revisionist ideas have become
influential in the scholarly academy, they have not attained universal
support: many academics continue to favor more critical views of the
Fuller Court.[93]:
514
Yale professor Owen M. Fiss, himself
sympathetic to the revisionists' views,[93]:
513–514
noted in 1993
that "by all accounts", the Fuller Court "ranks among the
worst".[79]:
3
In a 1998 review of Ely's book, law professor John
Cary Sims argued that Fuller and his fellow justices failed to fulfill
their obligation to go "against the prevailing political winds" instead
of simply deferring to the majority.[90]:
102–103
George Skouras,
writing in 2011, rejected the ideas of Ely, Ackerman, and Gillman,
agreeing instead with the Progressive argument that the Fuller
Court favored corporations over vulnerable Americans.[91]:
58
57–
Fuller's legacy came under substantial scrutiny amidst racial
unrest in 2020, with many condemning him for his vote
in Plessy.[94]
Statue[edit]
In 2013, a statue of Fuller, donated by a cousin,[95] was installed on
the lawn in front of Augusta's Kennebec County
Courthouse.[96] With Black Lives Matter protests and other
attention in 2020, focus on the Plessy decision led to debate about
the appropriateness of the statue's placement.[97] In August 2020,
the Maine Supreme Judicial Court requested that the statue be
removed, citing Plessy.[96] Kennebec County commissioners held a
public hearing in December; a majority of participants favored the
statue's removal.[94] In February 2021, the county commissioners
voted unanimously to move the statue from county property, citing
a desire to dissociate the county from racial
segregation.[98] Commissioners appointed a committee to identify a
new home for the statue.[99] In April 2021, the original donor
offered to take the statue back, agreeing to pay the costs for
removing it.[100] County commissioners accepted the offer later that
month; they agreed that the statue could remain in front of the
courthouse for up to a year while the original donor attempted to
find a new location where it can be displayed.[100]