Samuel Freeman Miller

(b. Richmond, Ky., 5 April 1816; d. Washington, D.C., 13 Oct. 1890; interred Oakland Cemetery, Kelkuka, Iowa), associate justice, 1862–1890. Samuel Miller, appointed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862, helped shape the Supreme Court's early interpretation of the Civil War Amendments, particularly the Fourteenth. A product of antebellum mid‐western antislavery politics, Justice Miller developed a moderately conservative jurisprudence of the Fourteenth Amendment as the author of the Court's majority opinion in the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873). He served on the Court until his death in 1890.

Miller was the son of Frederick Miller, a farmer, and Patsy Freeman. The future justice initially trained as a physician, earning a medical degree in 1838 from Transylvania University. He married Lucy Ballinger in 1839 (d. 1854) and Elizabeth Winter Reeves in 1857. After a decade‐long medical practice, Miller taught himself the law. He was admitted to the bar in 1847. Active in antebellum politics, Miller's early sympathies lay with antislavery Whig candidates. As proslavery sentiment increased in Kentucky in the late 1840s, Miller moved to Iowa, a state considerably more hospitable to his emancipationist views (see Slavery). Miller was active in Iowa Republican politics and supported Lincoln's presidential candidacy in 1860. Lincoln in July 1862 appointed Miller to the Court.

Miller's early voting reflected his strong commitment to the Union. During the Civil War, Justice Miller voted to sustain Lincoln's decisions to suspend habeas corpus and to try civilians by courts‐martial. After the war, Miller voted to uphold the constitutionality of loyalty oaths required of former Confederates seeking to hold office.

Miller left his most enduring mark on the Court's constitutional jurisprudence through his reading of the Fourteenth Amendment. As the author of the majority opinion in the Slaughterhouse Cases, Miller limited the effectiveness of the amendment's “privileges and immunities” clause as a vehicle to protect individuals against state deprivations of rights. In the opinion, Miller articulated the view that the Fourteenth Amendment was meant to provide former slaves a measure of equality before the law with whites, not to expand the liberties of the general population.

Like the majority of the Court in the 1870s and 1880s, Miller steered a middle course in interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment. He viewed the amendment as prohibiting state‐sponsored racial discrimination, but he generally refused to recognize its other guarantees. Miller voted with majorities in United States v. Cruikshank (1876) and the Civil Rights Cases (1883) to curtail federal efforts to combat private discrimination under the Fourteenth Amendment. Miller took a somewhat broader view of the Fifteenth Amendment, concluding for a unanimous Court in Ex parte Yarbrough (1884) that that amendment gave Congress the power to protect black voting rights against private interference.

Consistent with his limited view of the Fourteenth Amendment, Miller favored granting states wide latitudes in the regulation of business. He also saw the necessity for greater use of the Commerce Clause to achieve uniformity in federal regulation, a position reflected in his opinion in *Wabash v. Illinois (1886) that held that an Illinois statute on rate discrimination interfered with interstate commerce (see Commerce Power).

Miller did not completely abandon politics while on the Court. He, along with Justices Nathan Clifford, Stephen J. Field, Noah Swayne, and Joseph Bradley, served on the electoral commission that counted the electoral votes in the disputed Hayes‐Tilden election (see Extrajudicial Activities). President Ulysses Grant considered elevating Miller to chief justice before turning instead to Morrison R. Waite. In the 1880s Miller was considered by some Republican party leaders as a potential presidential candidate. Throughout his tenure on the Court, Justice Miller's jurisprudence was characterized by a pragmatic concern for preserving what he viewed as necessary governmental powers.

Bibliography

• Charles Fairman, Mr. Justice Miller and the Supreme Court: 1862–1890 (1939)

— Robert J. Cottrol

Samuel Freeman Miller (1816-1890), American jurist, was an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Samuel F. Miller was born on April 5, 1816, in Richmond, Ky. He earned his medical degree at Transylvania University in 1838. While serving as a country doctor, he read law and was admitted to the bar in 1847. A Whig and a member of a Kentucky group advocating the end of slavery by gradual emancipation, Miller hoped the state constitutional convention of 1849 would advance this goal; instead, the institution of slavery was strengthened. In 1850 he left Kentucky and set up his law practice in Keokuk, Iowa.

Miller became a Republican and strongly supported Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 election. When a U.S. Supreme Court vacancy occurred, lowa Republicans sought the first west-of-the-Mississippi seat. Miller, an affable politician with no experience as a judge, was appointed in July 1862.

Like his colleagues on the Court, Miller did not seek to assert leadership in the critical Reconstruction racial issues, leaving those matters to Congress. However, his opinion in the Slaughter-House Cases (1873), which sustained an act of the Louisiana Legislature regulating the butchering business in New Orleans, was a landmark in the field of civil rights. The claim was made that the 14th Amendment protected individual butchers from having to agree to the rules of a state-authorized monopoly. Miller upheld the state government, stating that the 14th Amendment pertained only to the newly freed Negroes, who needed protection.

Soon, however, those who sought to curtail the advancement of Negroes reinterpreted Miller's decision. If a state could regulate the affairs of citizens who were butchers, they could do the same for citizens who were black. Once Southern legislatures had come back into the hands of racial conservatives, the Slaughter-House doctrine became a bastion of white supremacy. In Slaughter-House Miller had, somewhat unwittingly, given a new direction to American history: Reconstruction and Negro advancement faltered, while business interests were given strong impetus. In a less ambiguous civil rights decision, Ex parte Yarbrough (1884), Miller upheld, under the 15th Amendment, the right of a Negro to vote in a Federal election.

Miller unsuccessfully sought the chief justiceship in 1873. He was considered a Republican presidential possibility in both 1880 and 1884. He married twice and was the father of two children. He died on Oct. 13, 1890, in Washington, D.C., while still serving on the bench.

Further Reading

Charles Fairman, Mr. Justice Miller and the Supreme Court, 1862-1890 (1939), is a fine, occasionally uncritical biography. Miller is somewhat overpraised by William Gillette in Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel, eds., The Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 1789-1969, vol. 2 (1969).

• Born: Apr. 5, 1816, Richmond, Ky.
• Education: Transylvania University, M.D., 1838; studied law privately
• Previous government service: justice of the peace and member of the Knox County Court, Ky., 1840s
• Appointed by President Abraham Lincoln July 6, 1862; replaced Peter V. Daniel, who died
• Supreme Court term: confirmed by the Senate July 16, 1862, by voice vote; served until Oct. 13, 1890
• Died: Oct. 13, 1890, Washington, D.C.

Samuel Miller participated in more than 5,000 decisions of the Supreme Court during his 28 years of service. Before Justice Miller, no other member of the Court had written as many opinions.

During and after the Civil War, Miller voted to sustain President Abraham Lincoln's actions to suspend habeas corpus and to try civilians in military courts in cases involving charges of disloyalty to the Union. A writ of habeas corpus requires officials to bring a person whom they have arrested and held in custody before a judge in a court of law. If a judge finds their reasons for holding the person unlawful, then the court frees the suspect.

However, Justice Miller's greatest influence on constitutional law was in his decision to support state government rights and powers. Thus, he opposed a broad interpretation of the 14th Amendment that would involve the Court as “a perpetual censer upon all legislation of the states.” He asserted this opinion for the Court in the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873). In this decision, Justice Miller advanced a narrow interpretation of the 14th Amendment that supported state government authority over the privileges and immunities of citizenship instead of emphasizing the federal government's power in these matters. Justice Miller concluded that it would be a violation of the Constitution to bring protection of all civil rights under the authority of the federal government. This would, he wrote, “fetter and degrade the state governments by subjecting them to the control of Congress.”

Justice Miller and his supporters on the Court effectively blocked the use of the 14th Amendment to protect black Americans from state government acts that would restrict their civil rights, especially their right to “equal protection of the laws.” This narrow interpretation of the 14th Amendment persisted until the middle of the 20th century.

See also Slaughterhouse Cases

Sources

• Charles Fairman, Mr. Justice Miller and the Supreme Court (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938)

Samuel Freeman Miller served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1862 to 1890. During his long tenure on the Court, Miller played a major role in restricting the reach of the Fourteenth Amendment into areas of the law reserved to the states. He is most famous for writing the majority opinion in the Slaughterhouse Cases, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 36, 21 L. Ed. 394 (1873).

Miller was born on April 5, 1816, in Richmond, Kentucky, and grew up on a farm. He attended Transylvania University, where he earned a medical degree in 1838. Miller practiced medicine for ten years, and during this time he taught himself the law. In 1847 he was admitted to the Kentucky bar, and soon after he abandoned his medical practice for a law practice in Knox County, Kentucky.

He became more interested in politics after he became an attorney. A member of the Whig party, Miller was opposed to slavery, which caused him difficulty in Kentucky as pro-slavery sentiment began to rise. In 1850 he moved to Iowa, which was more tolerant of his antislavery views. He established a law practice in Keokuk, Iowa, and became a prominent member of the Republican party and a supporter of Abraham Lincoln's presidential campaign in 1860.

Lincoln appointed Miller to the Supreme Court in 1862, during the most difficult period for the Union in the Civil War. Miller voted to sustain Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus and to try civilians by military courts-martial. Following the war Miller voted to uphold the constitutionality of loyalty oaths required of former Confederates who wished to hold public office.

Miller is best known for his majority opinion in the Slaughterhouse Cases in 1873. At issue was the scope of the authority in the Fourteenth Amendment, which had been passed in 1868 to guarantee that states could not restrict the constitutional rights of citizens and businesses. The case involved a Louisiana state law that allowed one meat company the exclusive right to slaughter livestock in New Orleans. Other packing companies were required to pay a fee for using the slaughterhouses. These companies filed suit, claiming that the law violated the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which stated that "no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."

Miller upheld the Louisiana monopoly law, ruling that the Privileges and Immunities Clause had limited effect because it only reached privileges and immunities guaranteed by U.S. citizenship, not state citizenship. The law in question dealt with state rights; therefore the Fourteenth Amendment had no effect. In Miller's view the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to grant former slaves legal equality, not to grant expanded rights to the general population. In addition, Miller was concerned that a broad interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment would give too much power to the federal government and distort the concept of federalism, which grants the states a large measure of power and autonomy.

Having set the standard for interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment, Miller and most members of the Court followed it during the 1870s and 1880s. Miller and the Court struck down state-sponsored racial discrimination under the amendment but refused to invoke it against private discrimination, most notably in the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 3 S. Ct. 18, 27 L. Ed. 835 (1883). In these cases the Court held that federal laws that banned private discrimination in public transportation and public accommodation were unconstitutional because the Fourteenth Amendment only reaches state-enacted discrimination.

In a nonjudicial role, Miller served on the electoral commission that counted the electoral votes in the deadlocked and disputed presidential election of 1876 between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden. In the 1880s some Republican leaders promoted Miller as a presidential candidate, but nothing came of it.

Miller died on December 13, 1890, in Washington, D.C.

For other people named Samuel Miller, see Samuel Miller.

Samuel Freeman Miller
Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
In office July 21, 1862 – October 13, 1890
Nominated by	Abraham Lincoln
Preceded by	Peter Vivian Daniel
Succeeded by	Henry Billings Brown
Born	April 5, 1816(1816-04-05) Richmond, Kentucky
Died	October 13, 1890 (aged 74) Washington, D.C.
Political party	Whig, Republican
Religion	Unitarian

Samuel Freeman Miller (April 5, 1816 – October 13, 1890) was an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1862–1890.

Born in Richmond, Kentucky, Miller was the son of a farmer. He received a medical degree in 1838 from Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentucky. While practicing medicine for a decade, he studied the law on his own and was admitted to the bar in 1847. He was for emancipation and supported the Whigs in Kentucky before moving to Keokuk, Iowa, a state more amenable to his views on slavery. Active in Hawkeye politics, he supported Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 election. Lincoln appointed Miller to the Supreme Court in 1862.

His opinions strongly favored Lincoln's positions, upholding his suspension of habeas corpus and trials by military commission. After the war, his narrow reading of the Fourteenth Amendment—he wrote the opinion in the Slaughterhouse Cases—limited the effectiveness of the amendment. He later joined the majority opinions in United States v. Cruikshank and the Civil Rights Cases holding that the amendment did not give the United States government the power to stop private, as opposed to state-sponsored, discrimination against blacks. In Ex 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 the Ku Klux Klan and other private groups. Miller also supported the use of broad federal power under the commerce clause to trump state regulations, as in Wabash v. Illinois.

After the 1876 presidential election between Rutherford Hayes and Samuel Tilden, Miller served on the electoral commission that awarded the disputed electoral votes to Hayes. Ulysses Grant considered Miller for the chief justice post, but instead chose Morrison Waite. In the 1880s, his name was floated as a Republican candidate for president.

Miller, a religious liberal, belonged to the Unitarian Church and served as President of the Unitarian's National Conference in 1884.

He died while still a member of the court, in Washington, D.C., and is buried at Oakland Cemetary in Keokuk, Iowa.

Noteworthy Opinions Authored

• The Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. 36 (1873)
• Murdock v. Memphis, 87 U.S. 20 Wall. 590 590 (1874)
• In re Burrus, 136 U.S. 586 (1890)

Further reading

• Ross, Michael A. 2003. Justice of Shattered Dreams: Samuel Freeman Miller and the Supreme Court during the Civil War Era. Louisiana State University Press.
• --------, 1998, "Justice Miller's Reconstruction: The Slaughter-House Cases, Health Codes, and Civil Rights in New Orleans, 1861-1873," Journal of Southern History LXIV(4): 649-76.

Legal offices
Preceded by Peter Vivian Daniel	Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States July 21, 1862 – October 13, 1890	Succeeded by Henry Billings Brown

Supreme Court of the United States

The Taney Court Chief Justice: Roger Brooke Taney (1836–1864) 1862–1863: J.M. Wayne | J. Catron | S. Nelson | R.C. Grier | N. Clifford | N.H. Swayne | S.F. Miller | D. Davis 1863–1864: J.M. Wayne | J. Catron | S. Nelson | R.C. Grier | N. Clifford | N.H. Swayne | S.F. Miller | D. Davis | S.J. Field The Chase Court Chief Justice: Salmon Portland Chase (1864–1873) 1864–1865: J.M. Wayne | J. Catron | S. Nelson | R.C. Grier | N. Clifford | N.H. Swayne | S.F. Miller | D. Davis | S.J. Field 1865–1867: J.M. Wayne | S. Nelson | R.C. Grier | N. Clifford | N.H. Swayne | S.F. Miller | D. Davis | S.J. Field 1867–1870: S. Nelson | R.C. Grier | N. Clifford | N.H. Swayne | S.F. Miller | D. Davis | S.J. Field 1870–1872: S. Nelson | N. Clifford | N.H. Swayne | S.F. Miller | D. Davis | S.J. Field | Wm. Strong | J.P. Bradley 1873: N. Clifford | N.H. Swayne | S.F. Miller | D. Davis | S.J. Field | Wm. Strong | J.P. Bradley | W. Hunt The Waite Court Chief Justice: Morrison Remick Waite (1874–1888) 1874–1877: N. Clifford | N.H. Swayne | S.F. Miller | D. Davis | S.J. Field | Wm. Strong | J.P. Bradley | W. Hunt 1877–1880: N. Clifford | N.H. Swayne | S.F. Miller | S.J. Field | Wm. Strong | J.P. Bradley | W. Hunt | J.M. Harlan 1881: N. Clifford | S.F. Miller | S.J. Field | J.P. Bradley | W. Hunt | J.M. Harlan | Wm. B. Woods | S. Matthews 1882–1887: S.F. Miller | S.J. Field | J.P. Bradley | J.M. Harlan | Wm. B. Woods | S. Matthews | H. Gray | S. Blatchford 1888: S.F. Miller | S.J. Field | J.P. Bradley | J.M. Harlan | S. Matthews | H. Gray | S. Blatchford | L.Q.C. Lamar II The Fuller Court Chief Justice: Melville Weston Fuller (1888–1910) 1888–1889: S.F. Miller | S.J. Field | J.P. Bradley | J.M. Harlan | S. Matthews | H. Gray | S. Blatchford | L.Q.C. Lamar II

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