1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Fuller, Melville Weston

FULLER, MELVILLE WESTON (1833–1910), American jurist, chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, was born at Augusta, Maine, on the 11th of February 1833. After graduating at Bowdoin College in 1853 he spent a year at the Harvard Law School, and in 1855 began the practice of law at Augusta, where he was an associate-editor of a Democratic paper, The Age, and served in the city council and as city attorney. In 1856 he removed to Chicago, Illinois, where he continued to practise until 1888, rising to a high position at the bar of the Northwest. For some years he was active in Democratic politics, being a member of the Illinois Constitutional Convention in 1862 and of the State House of Representatives from 1863 to 1865. He was a delegate to various National conventions of his party, and in that of 1876 placed Thomas A. Hendricks in nomination for the presidency. In 1888, by President Cleveland’s appointment, he succeeded Morrison R. Waite as chief-justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. In 1899 he was appointed by President McKinley a member of the arbitration commission at Paris to settle the Venezuela-British Guiana boundary dispute.