The New International Encyclopædia/Fuller, Melville Weston

FULLER, Melville Weston (1833—). An American jurist, born in Augusta, Me. He graduated at Bowdoin College in 1853, studied at the Harvard Law School, began legal practice at Augusta in 1855, and was also there for a time an associate editor of The Age, a Democratic newspaper. In 1856 he was president of the Augusta Common Council and city attorney, but in the same year resigned his offices and established himself at Chicago, Ill. He was a member of the Illinois State Constitutional Convention of 1802, and in 1863 sat in the Lower House of the Illinois Legislature. In 1864, 1872, 1876 (when he placed T. A. Hendricks in nomination), and 1880, in which year he withdrew from active politics, he was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. As a lawyer he attained prominent rank, and in 1888 he was appointed by President Cleveland Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, to succeed M. R. Waite (q.v.), deceased. His term witnessed an expansion of the Federal powers by means of the decision asserting the implied authority of the Executive to protect the Federal judges on occasions when there is just reason to believe that, while in the exercise of official duties, they are exposed to personal danger. In 1899 he was a member of the Arbitration Commission convened at Paris for the adjustment of the Anglo-Venezuelan boundary question. The degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him by Harvard in 1891.