Lemuel Shaw was the long-serving Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court who presided over several historic cases, including the 1836 case of a slave girl who was freed when brought into the state, Commonwealth v. Hunt, which held in 1843 that labor unions could organize without fear of being charged with conspiracy, and Roberts v the City of Boston, which upheld racial school segregation on a "separate but equal" basis in 1849. He retired in August, 1860 and died within a year. His daughter married Herman Melville. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Frederick Hathaway Chase, Lemuel Shaw, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, 1830-1860 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1918), 270.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Lawmaking/Litigating
