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. Personal life 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’’, 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. Resignation and death After his resignation from the bench, his health failed, and he died within a few months. He was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery. References Notes Bibliography Dictionary of American Biography, vol. 17, pp. 42–3. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1935. Frederic Hathaway Chase, Lemuel Shaw: Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1918. Address by BF Thomas in Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, x. 50-79 (Boston, 1869) Sketches by Samuel S. Shaw and P. Emory Aldrich in vol. iv., pp. 200–247, of Memorial Biographies of the New England Historic Genealogical Society (Boston, 1885). Leonard W. Levy, The Law of the Commonwealth and Chief Justice Shaw. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1957. Joel Parker, "The Law of Homicide"in The North American Review, Vol. LXXII, Jan. 1851, Boston, Charles C. Little and James Brown, p. 178–204. Robert Sullivan, The Disappearance of Dr. Parkman. Boston and Toronto, Little, Brown and Co., 1971. Further reading External links 1781 births 1861 deaths 19th-century American judges 19th-century American politicians Harvard College alumni Massachusetts Federalists Massachusetts Whigs Members of the Massachusetts House of Representatives Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and