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He was born on March 26, 1841 near Johnsville in Richland (now in Morrow) County, Ohio, United States, to which state his paternal grandfather had migrated from Pennsylvania in 1816. He was the son of Elah and Barbara (Haldeman) Shauck, of Swiss-English and German ancestry, respectively.
He attended the common schools, and entered Otterbein University at Westerville, Ohio, where he received the degree of A. B. in 1866. A year later he was graduated in law at the University of Michigan.
He began practice in Kansas City, Missouri, but in 1869 returned to Dayton, Ohio, where he formed a partnership with Samuel Boltin. This association lasted for fifteen years, becoming especially well known in the field of probate and estate practice.
Upon the creation of the circuit courts in Ohio in 1884, Shauck was elected a judge of the second, soon recognized as one of the ablest in the state. After ten years' service on this bench he was elected, in 1894, a member of the supreme court of Ohio, and served for nineteen years, being chief justice three times, through the system of rotation.
As a result, the supreme court of Ohio under his dominating leadership declared void many laws passed for social betterment, including an eight-hour law and a progressive inheritance tax. Many of the amendments proposed by the constitutional convention of 1921 were framed for the purpose of making such laws constitutional and thus rendering possible in Ohio legislation which had all along found favor in the eyes of the United States Supreme Court.
From 1900 to 1915 he taught the subject of equity in the College of Law at the Ohio State University. As a teacher of law he belonged to the old school; a textbook, supplemented with a few selected cases, was his material.
Failing in 1913 of renomination for a fourth term on the supreme court, largely because of the opposition to his conservative views, he associated himself with Edgar L. Weinland in Columbus, in the practice of law. In July 1917 the Ohio State Bar Association elected him its president.
He died in 1918 in Columbus, survived by one daughter.
John Allen Shauck was without question one of the greatest of the Ohio supreme court judges, who based on fundamental principles of constitutional law, serving for nineteen years on his post. Shauck's most useful contribution to Ohio jurisprudence was his courageous insistence upon the unconstitutionality of various acts of special legislation, passed for local partisan purposes. Such acts had been upheld by the supreme court over a long period of years, Shauck set out to have these many decisions overruled, and was finally successful in having a unanimous court concur with him.
As a judge he stood firmly for what he believed to be the most important of the fundamental principles of constitutional law. He held that the state legislatures are limited to powers governmental in nature and that it is the duty of courts to declare void all acts of state legislatures which are non-governmental in character even though not forbidden by express constitutional provision.
His opinions are distinguished not only for their broad scholarship and clear legal reasoning, but also for their literary style.
He was an excellent teacher, noted for his clarity of exposition and the deep personal interest he took in each student's development.
On June 1, 1876, Shauck married Ada May Phillips of Centralia. They had two children.
