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).

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.

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.

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.

[4] At a minimum, he was among the leading early to mid-Nineteenth Century American state court judges, such as Chancellor James Kent (New York), Theophilus Parsons (Massachusetts), John Bannister Gibson (Pennsylvania), Thomas Ruffin (North Carolina), Peter Hitchcock (Ohio), and Francios Xavier Martin (Louisiana), who were building their courts and the law in the early history of the United States.

Because of Boston's strong abolitionist movement, Shaw oversaw numerous cases related to slave law and race.

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.

At such a trial all points of law were argued fully by counsel and settled on the spot by decisions as "final and conclusive" as those of the highest appellate court on a bill of exceptions.

[citation needed]Such an accommodation was rooted in the consideration that the defendant and the public had a unique interest in securing, in the first instance, a verdict based on correct and authoritative rulings and, therefore, in avoiding repeated trials.

The trial lasted eleven days with the court sitting from nine in the morning until seven in the evening with a lunch break of one and one-half hours.

Joel Parker, a professor at Harvard Law School and former Chief Justice of New Hampshire, 1838 to 1848, noted that "the trial, in the course of its progress, was a cause of extreme excitement, extending through the whole length and breadth of the land, and reaching even into foreign countries."

Frederick Hathaway Chase in his 1918 biography of Shaw wrote: "Probably no charge ever delivered in this country has been followed as a precedent so frequently and so closely as this memorable effort.

With the dignity of expression and the clearness of thought and language ... he expounded the law of homicide in terms which have been followed closely in nearly every murder trial from that day to this.

Chase notes that regarding Shaw's review of the evidence presented that "it must be remembered that at the time when this case was tried there was no statute forbidding the court to charge upon the facts.

One pamphleteer at the time, identifying himself only as a "Member of the Legal Profession" wrote: It seems scarcely credible that Judge Shaw could have given utterance to the language published in his "charge to the jury."

[15]The definition of murder as stated by Shaw was "the killing of any person in the peace of the Commonwealth, with malice aforethought, either express or implied by law."

"[17] Having made the distinction in the law between murder and manslaughter, Shaw then argued, "Upon this subject, the rule as deduced from the authorities is, that the implication of malice arises in every case of intentional homicide; and, the fact of killing being first proved, all the circumstances of accident, necessity, or infirmity, are to be satisfactorily established by the party charged, unless they arise out of the evidence produced against him to prove the homicide, and the circumstances attending it.

Direct or positive evidence is when a witness can be called to testify to the precise fact which is the subject of the issue in trial; that is, in a case of homicide, that the party accused did cause the death of the deceased.

The advantages are, that, as the evidence commonly comes from several witnesses and different sources, a chain of circumstances is less likely to be falsely prepared and arranged, and falsehood and perjury are more likely to be detected and fail of their purpose.

It is that state of the case, which, after the entire comparison and consideration of all the evidence, leaves the minds of jurors in that condition that they cannot say they feel an abiding conviction, to a moral certainty, of the truth of the charge.

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.

Widely read in English literature, Shaw was also attracted by new mechanical processes and was a member of many learned and charitable societies.