Fuller, Melville Weston (1833–1910)

US jurist and chief justice of the US Supreme Court 1888–1910. Fuller endorsed court options that limited state and federal strengths to regulate private business. He sided with the majority of the Court in Pollack v. Farmers Loan and Trust Co. (1895), which held invalid a flat-rate US income tax, leading to passage of the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1913, authorizing an income tax.

Fuller, born in Augusta, Maine, followed an early career in law and Democratic politics and then continued his activities in Chicago in 1856. He was a supporter of Stephen Douglas in his 1858 election as US senator and in his bid for the presidency in 1860. Fuller supported Grover Cleveland in the 1884 presidential who appointed him chief justice.