Samuel Freeman Miller | |
|---|---|
 Samuel Freeman Miller, byMathew Brady,c. 1865-75 | |
| Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States | |
| In office July 21, 1862 – October 13, 1890[1] | |
| Nominated by | Abraham Lincoln |
| Preceded by | Peter Daniel |
| Succeeded by | Henry Billings Brown |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1816-04-05)April 5, 1816 Richmond, Kentucky, U.S. |
| Died | October 13, 1890(1890-10-13) (aged 74) Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Political party | Whig (Before 1854) Republican (1854–1890) |
| Education | Transylvania University (MD) |
| Signature | .png) |
Samuel Freeman Miller (April 5, 1816 – October 13, 1890) was an American lawyer and physician who served as anassociate justice of theU.S. Supreme Court from 1862 until his death in 1890 and who authored landmark opinions inUnited States v. Kagama andThe Slaughterhouse Cases.
Born inRichmond, Kentucky, Miller was the son ofyeoman farmer Frederick Miller and his wife Patsy. He earned a medical degree in 1838 fromTransylvania University inLexington, Kentucky. While practicing medicine for a decade inBarbourville, Kentucky,[2] he taught himself the law and was admitted to the bar in 1847. Favoring theabolition ofslavery, which was prevalent in Kentucky, he supported theWhigs in Kentucky.
In 1850, Miller moved toKeokuk, Iowa, which was a state more amenable to his views on slavery, and he immediately freed his few slaves who had come with his family from Kentucky. Active in Iowa politics, he supportedAbraham Lincoln in the 1860 election. Lincoln nominated Miller to the Supreme Court on July 16, 1862. He was confirmed by theU.S. Senate that same day,[3] and wassworn into office on July 21.[1]
His opinions strongly favored Lincoln's positions, and he upheld his wartime suspension ofhabeas corpus and trials by military commission. After the war, his narrow reading of theFourteenth Amendment—he wrote the opinion in the 1873Slaughterhouse Cases—limited the effectiveness of the amendment. Miller wrote the majority opinion inBradwell v. Illinois, which held that the right to practice law was not constitutionally protected under thePrivileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
He later joined the majority opinions inUnited States v. Cruikshank and theCivil Rights Cases, holding that the amendment did not give the U.S. government the power to stop private—as opposed to state-sponsored—discrimination against blacks. InEx parte Yarbrough, 110 U.S. 651 (1884), however, Miller held that the federal government had broad authority to act to protect black voters from violence by theKu Klux Klan and other private groups. Miller also supported the use of broad federal power under theCommerce Clause to override state regulations, as inWabash v. Illinois.
Justice Miller wrote 616 opinions in his 28 years on the Court; Justice Field (whose 34 year SCOTUS tenure mostly overlapped Miller's) wrote 544 opinions; Chief Justice Marshall wrote 508 opinions in his 33 years on the Court, leading futureChief JusticeWilliam Rehnquist to describe him as "very likely the dominant figure" on the Court in his time.[4] When Chief JusticeSalmon P. Chase died in 1873, attorneys and law journals across the country lobbied for Miller to be appointed to succeed him, but PresidentUlysses Grant was determined to appoint an outsider; he ultimately choseMorrison Waite. In his tribute to Miller delivered in Portland, Oregon, on October 16, 1890,George Henry Williams stated his support of Miller in detailing his interactions with PresidentUlysses S. Grant about Chase's replacement.[5]
After the1876 presidential election betweenRutherford Hayes andSamuel Tilden, Miller served on theelectoral commission that awarded the disputed electoral votes to the Republican Hayes. In the 1880s, his name was floated as a Republican candidate for president.
In the winter of 1889 and spring of 1890, Justice Miller delivered a series of ten lectures on constitutional law at theNational University School of Law in Washington, D.C. They were published posthumously, along with two earlier lectures delivered in 1887.[6]
Miller, a religious liberal, belonged to theUnitarian Church and served as President of the Unitarians' National Conference. He died in Washington, D.C., while still a member of the Court. Following his death in 1890, his funeral was held at Keokuk's First Unitarian Church;[7] Miller had been one of the congregation's founders.[8] He is buried at Oakland Cemetery inKeokuk, Iowa.
Miller's first wife was Lucy Love Ballinger Miller (1827 – 1854) whom he married in 1842, and with whom he had three daughters. In 1856, he married Eliza Winter Reeves (1827 – 1900), with whom he had a son and daughter.[8]
Media related toSamuel Freeman Miller at Wikimedia Commons| Legal offices | ||
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| Preceded by | Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States 1862–1890 | Succeeded by |
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