From the Friday Vault: Picking a Supreme Court Justice or Picking on His Poetry?

On March 23, 1888, Chief Justice Morrison Waite died. He was seventy-one. For fourteen years he had occupied the center seat on the highest court in the land.

After considering a short list of possible replacements, President Grover Cleveland opted for Chicago-based attorney, Melville Weston Fuller. He’d wanted a prominent Midwesterner, and with 30 years of legal practice in Illinois, Fuller seemed to fit the bill. Cleveland announced the nomination of the fifty-five-year-old on May 2, 1888.