While Mr. Fuller’s chief claim to distinction is as a lawyer and jurist, he still performed many services of a public and political character. In 1862, he was a member of the State Constitutional Convention of Illinois, and in 1863 was elected to membership in the lower house of the legislature of that State. A lifelong Democrat, he frequently represented his party in National Conventions, being a delegate in 1864, 1872, 1876, and 1880. He placed Thomas A. Hendricks in nomination for the vice-presidency in the convention of 1876, in a notable speech, but subsequent to 1880 refrained from further active participation in party councils. He was named by President Cleveland for the office of chief justice of the United States, to succeed Morrison R. Waite, on April 30, 1888. His commission was signed July 30 of the same year, and he took his seat, as the eighth chief justice of the Supreme Court, being at the time, with one exception, the youngest member of that body.
Although Mr. Fuller's practice was quite general in its nature, yet in his later years he confined it very largely to the Federal Courts. It has been said of him that “a marked characteristic of his methods as a practitioner at the bar was thoroughness, to which end he always made a careful preparation of his cases before they came up for trial. In addressing court or jury he spoke with clearness and earnestness, and some of his arguments in important cases contain a wealth of research and scholarly reasoning. A desire for justice dominated him in the conduct of his cases, rather than a desire to win. As a fluent, earnest, convincing advocate he had few equals.”
These characteristics as a lawyer, with the judicial refinements, are equally marked in him as chief justice of our highest court. The mental quality which predominates is judgment poise. All previous prejudice, the mood of the moment, possible penalty or retribution, are dismissed or rendered colorless in the presence of a plea for justice at his hands. He possesses, too, keen analytical power, and after the test, of the law, or of logic or of facts, or of precedents has been applied, he reaches decisions from which those personal elements, which are often fraught with error, have been largely eliminated. This impersonal judgment, is the judgment of the impartial jurist. In the matter of the presentation of an opinion, as well, the chief justice has an eloquence of diction particularly persuasive. A lawyer of wide experience, a citizen of the highest type, a jurist of undoubted ability, Chief Justice Fuller has proved a worthy successor of the
