Melville Fuller

Melville Fuller
Former Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court From: July 20, 1888 – July 4, 1910
Nominator	Grover Cleveland
Predecessor	Morrison Waite
Successor	Edward Douglass White
Information
Party	Democrat
Spouse(s)	Calista Reynolds (1858) Mary Coolbaugh (1866)
Religion	Episcopalian

Melville Weston Fuller (1833-1910) was the Chief Justice of the United States from 1888-1910.

Melville Fuller was appointed Chief Justice by President Grover Cleveland in 1888. Fuller managed Democratic Party candidate Stephen A. Douglas's campaign in the 1860 presidential election. He was known as a Copperhead Democrat. In 1896, a Fuller Court decision declared that racial segregation does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment so long as the "separate but equal" doctrine is followed. The decision allowed the continued existence of Jim Crow laws for another six decades.

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