Probably few physicians today are aware that their profession once contributed an eminent justice to the Supreme Court of the United States. He was Dr. Samuel Freeman Miller, a gentleman from Kentucky who was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1862 by President Lincoln. He served with distinction as an associate justice of this court for the next 28 years and on several occasions was considered for promotion to chief justice, although this honor went in 1864 to Salmon P. Chase, in 1874 to Morrison R. Waite, and in 1888 to Melville W. Fuller.
Dr. Miller was a lawyer as well as a physician, but until he studied medicine, and later law, he had had no formal education whatever. When he sat on the bench, however, he was regarded as an able and forceful exponent of the law, if not a scholarly one.
Born at Richmond, in the blue grass