A native of Augusta, and a son of the late Frederic A. Fuller, Esq., a lawyer of that city. Melville was born, Feb. 11, 1833, and prepared himself, by a course of self-education, for Bowdoin College, graduating in 1853 with distinguished honor. He began the practice of law in his native city, and was an associate editor of The Age. He was President of the Common Council, and City Solicitor; but soon removed to Chicago. So well did he perform his duties as a man of business that, in 1861, he was elected to the State constitutional convention, and in the year following to the General Assembly. He was a member of the Democratic national convention in 1864, and in 1872 of the Baltimore Democratic convention. Mr. Fuller has cultivated literary tastes, as shown in lectures and poems before college and other societies.

Melville W. Fuller: Biography
Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Media

Melville Fuller
Wikipedia

Melville W. Fuller Reconsidered
James W. Ely Jr.

The Fuller Court, 1888-1910
Supreme Court Historical Society

[Chandler B. Beach, The New Student's Reference Work for Teachers Students and Families (Chicago: F. E. Compton and Company, 1909)]
[With permission of the Florida Center for Instructional Technology]

Poem

Melville Weston Fuller, "Grant," 5 The Green Bag 36 (1893)

Addresses

Melville Weston Fuller, Address in Commoration of the Inauguration of George Washington as First President of the United States Delivered Before the Two House of Congress December 11, 1889 by Melville Weston Fuller, LL.D. Chief Justice of the United States (Washington [D.C.]: Government Printing Office, 1890) [online text]

Writings-Editor

Melville Weston Fuller (ed.), The Professions (Boston: Hall and Locke, 1911) [online text][Vol. 5 in a ten-volume series, Vocations, edited by William DeWitt Hyde]

Bibliography

John Hart Ely, Jr., The Chief Justiceship of Melville W. Fuller, 1888-1910 (Columbia: : University of South Carolina Press, 1995)

Willard L. King, Melville Weston Fuller: Chief Justice of the United States,
1888-1910 (New York: Macmillan, 1950)(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967)