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American judge

Lemuel Shaw (January 9, 1781 – March 30, 1861) was an American jurist who served as chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (1830–1860). Prior to his appointment he also served for several years in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and as a state senator. In 1847, Shaw became the father in law of author Herman Melville. He ruled on prominent cases involving slavery, segregation, and religion.

Shaw was born in West Barnstable, Massachusetts, the second son of the Rev. Oakes Shaw and his second wife Susanna, who was a daughter of John H. Hayward of Braintree. The Shaws were descendants of Abraham Shaw (January 2, 1590 – November 2, 1638), who left Halifax, England in 1636 and settled in Dedham. Oakes Shaw, a Congregationalist minister, was pastor of the West Church in Barnstable for forty seven years. Lemuel was named for his uncle, Dr. Hayward of Boston, father of George Hayward, the surgeon. Educated at home by his father except for a few months at Braintree, he entered Harvard in 1796. There, he taught school in winter vacations. After graduating with high honors in 1800, he taught for a year in a Boston public school, and wrote articles and read proof for the Boston Gazette, a Federalist newspaper. In August 1801, he began studying law in Boston under David Everett. Meanwhile, he learned French proficiently from a refugee, Antoine Jay, afterwards a founder in France of the liberal newspaper Le Constitutionnel. In 1802, he moved with Everett to Amherst, New Hampshire, where besides doing legal work he contributed a poem on dancing and translations from French to the Farmers' Cabinet, a local newspaper. He became engaged to Nancy Melvill, daughter of Maj. Thomas Melvill of Boston (the subject of Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.'s poem "The Last Leaf") but she died soon afterward.

Admitted to the bar in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, in September 1804, and in Plymouth County, Massachusetts that November, Shaw began practice in Boston. When his associate left Boston after being acquitted of murder in a political quarrel, he practiced alone for fifteen years. In about 1822, Shaw took Sidney Bartlett, an able trial lawyer, as his junior partner. His practice gradually became large, but he was less known as an advocate than as the adviser of important commercial enterprises. In politics, Shaw was first a Federalist and later a Webster Whig, but remained all his life a free trader. He attended Unitarian services, though he was never a communicant. Fond of entertaining and dining out, he was simple and affectionate in his home life, his interest in the social events of his household extending to the minutest details. Shaw was prepared for his judicial career by numerous public positions. He was elected a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, serving in 1811–14, 1820 and 1829, and as a state senator in 1821–22. He served as a member of the constitutional convention of 1820. He also held many offices in Boston. Shaw was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1823. In 1822, with few precedents to guide him, he drafted the first charter of the city, which lasted until 1913.

On the death of Chief Justice Isaac Parker, Governor Levi Lincoln offered Shaw an appointment as chief justice. Daniel Webster successfully urged Shaw to accept, though it meant giving up a practice of $15,000 to $20,000 a year for a salary of $3,500. And for this, if nothing else, Webster later thought the public owed him a debt of gratitude. Shaw's commission was issued on August 30, 1830. He served for almost exactly 30 years, resigning on August 21, 1860. During his tenure as Chief Justice, Shaw is reported to have heard between 2,000 and 2,200 cases Many would help shape American law and jurisprudence. His exceptionally long judicial career coincided with the development of many important industries and, coincidentally, Shaw made law on such matters as water power, railroads, and other public utilities. Some commentators have argued that Shaw had more influence on the development of American law than any other state court judge in the country's history. Shaw's opinions were not often readily quotable and are instead recognized for solid reasoning. "His words had weight rather than brilliancy or eloquence." His reputation as a jurist lies mostly in the substance of his work, as opposed to the literary quality of his writings for the court. In Shaw's time on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, the chief justice often sat at trials. In the role of a trial judge, he was considered to be thorough, systematic, and patient. He was also renowned for his ability to clearly instruct juries.

Because of Boston's strong abolitionist movement, Shaw oversaw numerous cases related to slave law and race. In 1836, Shaw's opinion in Commonwealth v. Aves held that a slave brought voluntarily into Massachusetts, a free state, was a "sojourner," or a journeyer, and not taking domicile in that state. Therefore, slaves could be brought into the state only for a limited time. Abolitionists, who had brought the habeas corpus suit, wanted a rule which would have freed the girl, while southern defenders of the practice wanted the court to uphold the concept of comity and acknowledge the legality of slavery. Shaw attempted to split the decision by applying the archaic "sojourner" status to slaves. Further, Shaw rejected the doctrine of interstate comity. In his strict understanding, comity is a vehicle for facilitating trade and amicable interactions between jurisdictions. Therefore, Shaw reasoned that a state or jurisdiction is not required to honor comity if in doing so it is sanctioning practices repugnant to the state's own norms. The Aves case caused an uproar in the South where planters accused the Northerners of denying their equal sovereign status. Shaw also drew criticism from conservative jurists in other Northern states, as in State v. Post (N. J. 1845), which stated that New Jersey still allowed slavery. His ruling in favor of the constitutionality of school segregation in Roberts v. City of Boston (1849) established "separate but equal" as a legal doctrine in the state. In a later case, he again refused to release fugitive slave Thomas Sims on habeas corpus grounds, as he felt bound by the Constitution and the law, as the recent Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 required states and local governments to cooperate in the capture of escaped slaves. Sims' Case was the first by any court in the United States to uphold the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Act.

The trial of anti Catholic rioters who destroyed the Ursuline convent in Charlestown in Commonwealth v. Buzzell (1834). In Farwell v. Boston & Worcester Railroad Corp. (1842), Shaw created the "fellow servant" rule, using contract rationale to prevent a railroad laborer from recovering from his employer. Shaw held that the laborer was at liberty to prevent his injury and for the corporation to insure against it would create a moral hazard problem. The decision empowered both the railroad industry and the insurance industry, which now had a market for insuring against workplace injuries. In Commonwealth v. Hunt (1842), Shaw provided an important precedent in labor relations by arguing that members of labor unions were not engaging in criminal conspiracies against their employers. In Cary v. Daniels, 8 Metcalf (1844), Shaw created an important legal precedent in Massachusetts regarding the regulation of water power rights belonging to riparian proprietors. In Cobb v. Cobb (1847), Shaw presided over the unsuccessful divorce case of Henry Cobb against his wife Augusta Adams Cobb, for joining the Mormons and eventually marrying Brigham Young in a polygamous marriage. In Commonwealth v. Goode (1849), Shaw presided over the trial of Washington Goode, a black seaman convicted and executed on circumstantial evidence of murdering a fellow black mariner. In Brown v. Kendall (1850), Shaw established negligence as the dominant standard of tort law, and ruled that injured plaintiffs have the burden of proving that the defendant was negligent. Shaw's opinion in Commonwealth v. Alger (1851) was an early and influential attempt to define the limits of state police power.

On January 6, 1818, Shaw married Elizabeth Knapp, daughter of Josiah Knapp of Boston. She died in 1822, leaving a son and a daughter, Elizabeth, who became the wife of author Herman Melville. He was the nephew of Shaw's former fiancée. In 1847, the year of his marriage to Elizabeth, Melville dedicated his Polynesian novel, Typee, to Lemuel Shaw. Shaw also may have been the model for Captain Vere in Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative), due to his unflinching application of the harsh fugitive slave law. On August 29, 1827, Shaw married Hope Savage, daughter of Dr. Samuel Savage of Barnstable; they had two sons. Widely read in English literature, Shaw was also attracted by new mechanical processes and was a member of many learned and charitable societies. He was a fellow of Harvard College from 1834 until his death, and an overseer from 1831 to 1853, two offices rarely united. Shaw was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1855.

After his resignation from the bench in 1860, his health failed, and he died within a few months. He was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery.