Justice Mark A. Fullerton | Temple of Justice

Born: Saturday, November 13th, 1858

Died: Tuesday, September 15th, 1931

Birthplace: Marion County, Oregon

Religion: Protestant

Education: Willamette University, B.S. (1878)

Career: Prosecutor (1887-1889)

Served: Monday, January 9th, 1899 to Monday, September 21st, 1931

Chief Justice: Monday, January 12th, 1903 to Monday, January 9th, 1905;
Monday, April 16th, 1928 to Monday, January 14th, 1929

Political Party: Republican

Mark A. Fullerton, born on his father’s farm near Salem, Oregon, attended public schools in Marion County and entered Salem’s Willamette University in 1875. Although he developed an interest in law at Willamette, he graduated in 1878 in engineering. The county employed him as a surveyor. He became Deputy U. S. Surveyor in 1882, responsible for platting an Indian reservation south of The Dalles, Oregon. Fullerton read the law in his spare time until Judge Stratton of The Dalles took him under his tutelage. The Oregon bar admitted him in 1883 and he practiced in Salem until 1885 when he and his boyhood friend, Stephen J. Chadwick, moved to Colfax, a small farming community in southeastern Washington Territory. The two opened a law office and remained partners until Fullerton won election to the state’s highest bench in 1898. Chadwick, a Democrat, and Fullerton, a Republican, each became leaders in their respective political parties, and each served together on the supreme court.

Fullerton served one term (1887-1889) as Whitman County Prosecutor. In 1898 the Republican convention nominated him as its candidate to replace retiring Judge Elmon Scott on the state supreme court, and in November, Fullerton defeated his closest rival by nearly 8,000 votes. He then began the longest tenure on the supreme court – thirty two years – of all eighty-eight justices. He won an unprecedented six consecutive elections. In 1908 his law partner Chadwick joined him on the bench. When he died in 1931, only four other sitting state supreme court justices in the United States exceeded Fullerton’s thirty-two years of service.

Because of his long tenure, overall judgments of Fullerton’s positions are difficult. As membership on the court changed, Fullerton’s position relative to other justices also changed. In the early 1900s the judge tended to be somewhat moderate-to-liberal in negligence and criminal cases, often siding with the underdog. He felt that everyone should have his or her day in the appeals court. For example, in Brown v. Davis in 1904 he insisted that:

Courts should not be over zealous in searching for reasons for dismissal of appeals. The purpose of an appeal is to have a review of a cause upon its merits and the construction of the statutes should be with a view to accomplish this end, rather than to dispose of them without such review.

In these earlier sessions, Fullerton became the bench’s leading dissenter. Later, when membership changed and the court shifted away from its conservative stance, Fullerton dissented less and tended to occupy a centrist position.

Justice Fullerton gained national recognition, especially for his opinion in a Workers’ Compensation Act case. According to one reporter:

It reversed a year-old New York Supreme Court decision which held the act unconstitutional.

Theodore Roosevelt, former United States President and editor of The Outlook, commented favorably on the decision on which many states now base such legislation.

Judge Fullerton’s opinions were known throughout the nation for their clarity.

One prominent judge once said: “I don’t think much of Washington’s courts but I enjoy reading Fullerton’s opinions.”

In 1887 Judge Fullerton married Ella lone Rounds, a native of Michigan whose family had moved to Colfax. The Fullertons had three sons: Roscoe, a lawyer, Lynne, a physician, and Charles, a public official in the insurance commissioner’s office. Fullerton belonged to the Masons, Elks, and United Workmen. He was an avid duck hunter, fisherman, and gardener. Judge Fullerton died of a stroke in Olympia at the age of seventy-three.

Selected References

William Prosser, The History of the Puget Sound Country, vol. 2 (1903), pp. 177-178; H. James Boswell, American Blue Book: Western Washington (1922), p. 56; W. C. Wolfe, Sketches of Washingtonians (1906), p. 169; Lloyd Spencer and Lancaster Pollard, A History of the State of Washington, vol. 3 (1937), pp. 385-386.

The preceding biography is from Charles Sheldon's The Washington High Bench: A Biographical History of the State Supreme Court, 1889-1991, © 1992 by the Board of Regents of Washington State University. Reprinted here with permission and licensed to the public under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License by The Temple of Justice Project.