Melville Fuller - Chief Justice

Chief Justice

See also: List of United States Supreme Court cases by the Fuller Court

On April 30, 1888, President Grover Cleveland nominated him for the Chief Justice position when Morrison Waite died in 1888. 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. 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." 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. Fuller did not take the oath of office until October 8, 1888.

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

The Court under Fuller declared the income tax law unconstitutional in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co., 157 U.S. 429. In Western Union Telegraph Company v. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 128 U.S. 39 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.. 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). In his opinion the court sided with the 7-man majority, Justice David J. Brewer did not participate, ruling in favor of "separate but equal" segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson.

On immigration, Fuller, speaking for the court, ruled in US Supreme Court case "Gonzalez vs. Williams" (192 U.S. 1, 1904), 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". 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 Isabel 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 Act was passed by Congress which provided for even more immigration/citizenship rights to Puerto Ricans.