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Chief Justiceships of the United States Supreme Court
The Chief Justiceship of Melville W. Fuller, 1888-1910
A study of the man who led the Supreme Court as the nineteenth century ended and the twentieth began, exploring issues of property, government authority, and more.In this comprehensive interpretation of the Supreme Court during the pivotal tenure of Melville W. Fuller, James W. Ely Jr., provides a judicial biography of the man who led the Court from 1888 until 1910 as well as a comprehensive and thoughtful analysis of the jurisprudence dispensed under his leadership. Highlighting Fuller’s skills as a judicial administrator, Ely argues that a commitment to economic liberty, the security of private property, limited government, and states’ rights guided Fuller and his colleagues in their treatment of constitutional issues.Ely directly challenges the conventional idea that the Fuller Court adopted laissez-faire principles in order to serve the needs of business. Rather, Ely presents the Supreme Court’s efforts to safeguard economic rights not as a single-minded devotion to corporate interests but as a fulfillment of the property-conscious values that shaped the constitution-making process in 1787. The resulting study illuminates a range of related legal issues, including the Supreme Court’s handling of race relations, criminal justice, governmental authority, and private law disputes.
248 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 28, 2019
This book, published in 1995, is the open-minded and scholarly beginning of the chief justice biographies series by the University of South Carolina Press. It sets that notable series on a firm foundation.
Although Melville Fuller was a very wealthy and distinguished Chicago lawyer who sat on the boards of numerous banks, real estate organizations, and companies, he was little known outside of his hometown when appointed in 1888. A devoted Democrat, in 1862 he was part of a failed Illinois Constitutional Convention that tried to end black voting rights and immigration into the state (the voters struck it down, although they separately voted for the two anti-black clauses). In 1863 he was part of the prorogued "Peace" Illinois legislature that attacked Lincoln's policies and the Emancipation Proclamation. He was most famous, however, for fighting for the Episcopalian minister Charles Cheney's and his congregations right to keep their church from the central Episcopalian body that had removed him from it, due to Cheney's "low church" modernizations of the services. President Grover Cleveland picked Fuller, before receiving Fuller's assent, after the lawyer had already turned the President down for the Civil Service Commission, Pacific Railway Commission, and solicitor general, because he needed a Westerner and someone who could get the assent of all sides in an election. The Senate was controlled by Republicans 39-37, but Fuller quickly received the affirmation of the two Illinois Republican senators, and won 41-20.
Fuller was not an intellectual leader of the court, his unflappable courtesy, rigorous administrative skills, and fair-mindedness made it the Fuller Court in fact as well as name. He inaugurated the practice of justices all shaking hands before each conference on cases, and pushed his onetime enemy, Senator William Evarts, to pass the Circuit Courts Act of 1891 to start bringing down the Supreme Court docket from the 1,800 cases it had at the time.
Although Fuller's Court is generally recognized as pro-business and conservative, the author shows that only about 20% of all business regulatory laws that came to the court were struck down. In "takings" cases, such as the per curiam opinion in Tenement House Department of NY v. Moeschen (1906), the court said a public health law could force landlords to apply sanitary fixtures, and, in Welch v. Swasey (1909), it said the city of Boston could limit heights in residential districts. It broadened "public use" takings to include mandated spur tracks for even a single plant, or irrigation for a single property owner. It generally upheld "due process" attacks on new regulation, but whittled down the contract clause cases (although it did, in Muhlker v. New York and Harlem Railroad Company (1905), say that even new state judicial rulings could be an infringement on contracting rights). It tended to have a broad conception of interstate commerce, and struck down a handful of inspection laws (such as a Virginia law requiring inspection of flour from other states with no inspection for its own, or another Virginia law prohibiting sale of meat if slaughtered more than one hundred miles away), as tending to disintegrate the national market. In Leisy v. Hardin (1890), Fuller himself created the "original package" doctrine, which said that states could not ban out-of-state sales of any product if that product was still in its original package.
So Fuller was pro-market, but not as pro-market as one would think, and, although his civil rights cases are rightly excoriated, he often defended civil rights (such as in the "Insular Cases," about Puerto Rican citizens), when other more "progressive" justices would ignore them. On the whole, his contributions to American jurisprudence have been underestimated. This book helps remind us of them.
Although Melville Fuller was a very wealthy and distinguished Chicago lawyer who sat on the boards of numerous banks, real estate organizations, and companies, he was little known outside of his hometown when appointed in 1888. A devoted Democrat, in 1862 he was part of a failed Illinois Constitutional Convention that tried to end black voting rights and immigration into the state (the voters struck it down, although they separately voted for the two anti-black clauses). In 1863 he was part of the prorogued "Peace" Illinois legislature that attacked Lincoln's policies and the Emancipation Proclamation. He was most famous, however, for fighting for the Episcopalian minister Charles Cheney's and his congregations right to keep their church from the central Episcopalian body that had removed him from it, due to Cheney's "low church" modernizations of the services. President Grover Cleveland picked Fuller, before receiving Fuller's assent, after the lawyer had already turned the President down for the Civil Service Commission, Pacific Railway Commission, and solicitor general, because he needed a Westerner and someone who could get the assent of all sides in an election. The Senate was controlled by Republicans 39-37, but Fuller quickly received the affirmation of the two Illinois Republican senators, and won 41-20.
Fuller was not an intellectual leader of the court, his unflappable courtesy, rigorous administrative skills, and fair-mindedness made it the Fuller Court in fact as well as name. He inaugurated the practice of justices all shaking hands before each conference on cases, and pushed his onetime enemy, Senator William Evarts, to pass the Circuit Courts Act of 1891 to start bringing down the Supreme Court docket from the 1,800 cases it had at the time.
Although Fuller's Court is generally recognized as pro-business and conservative, the author shows that only about 20% of all business regulatory laws that came to the court were struck down. In "takings" cases, such as the per curiam opinion in Tenement House Department of NY v. Moeschen (1906), the court said a public health law could force landlords to apply sanitary fixtures, and, in Welch v. Swasey (1909), it said the city of Boston could limit heights in residential districts. It broadened "public use" takings to include mandated spur tracks for even a single plant, or irrigation for a single property owner. It generally upheld "due process" attacks on new regulation, but whittled down the contract clause cases (although it did, in Muhlker v. New York and Harlem Railroad Company (1905), say that even new state judicial rulings could be an infringement on contracting rights). It tended to have a broad conception of interstate commerce, and struck down a handful of inspection laws (such as a Virginia law requiring inspection of flour from other states with no inspection for its own, or another Virginia law prohibiting sale of meat if slaughtered more than one hundred miles away), as tending to disintegrate the national market. In Leisy v. Hardin (1890), Fuller himself created the "original package" doctrine, which said that states could not ban out-of-state sales of any product if that product was still in its original package.
So Fuller was pro-market, but not as pro-market as one would think, and, although his civil rights cases are rightly excoriated, he often defended civil rights (such as in the "Insular Cases," about Puerto Rican citizens), when other more "progressive" justices would ignore them. On the whole, his contributions to American jurisprudence have been underestimated. This book helps remind us of them.
April 17, 2014
It is rare to read an authoritative and mainstream history that leans right. it is not unfair to say that many lean left and some are revisionist conservative "correctives."
Here, Ely sympathetically portrays Fuller as a person and the Fuller Court's response to seemingly exclusive ideological goals. the book is weakest when discussing cases as Fuller's roles is written to the exclusion of others and there's just too much information to convey. but Ely's conclusions - many that the Fuller Court should have been more consistent - are interesting and well-supported.
Here, Ely sympathetically portrays Fuller as a person and the Fuller Court's response to seemingly exclusive ideological goals. the book is weakest when discussing cases as Fuller's roles is written to the exclusion of others and there's just too much information to convey. but Ely's conclusions - many that the Fuller Court should have been more consistent - are interesting and well-supported.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews