The Justices of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and Major Opinions - Vol. 2

it was made." His sense of the past and the future was keen, yet he managed to keep anticipations and survivals in theft subordinate places; his business was with living realities, not with embryos and ghosts. In a breathtaking achievement of will, Miller calculated the possible, measured the public good and necessity, demanded justice and common sense in the result, and only then devised the constitutional means. In short, he was generated by great power matched with enduring purpose. The raw power and high purpose shone in his prose; all was clear, yet all the phrases had bite and contour. As boldly and nationally constructive as John Marshall, with the intellectual muscle of an Oliver Wendell Holmes, and as respectful of legislative and state responsibility as Felix Frankfurter, Miller was the best of Lincoln's appointments—a great Justice, indeed one of the finest to grace the bench in the nation's service.

Miscellaneous manuscripts exist and are cited in the excellent biography by Charles Fairman, Mr. Justice Miller and the Supreme Court, 1862-1890 ( Cambridge, Mass., 1939). Fairman also has written several articles including "Justice Samuel Miller: A Study of a Judicial Statesman," 50 Political Science Quarterly 15 ( 1935); and " Samuel F. Miller, Justice of the Supreme Court," 10 Vanderbilt Law Review 193 ( 1957), that do justice to the man, his work, and his worth. A listing by year of Justice Miller's opinions is to be found in the appendix to Charles Gregory, Samuel Freeman Miller ( Iowa City, 1907), while Miller's extensive and significant writings off the bench are listed in the useful volume by Alan F. Westin, ed., An Autobiography of the Supreme Court ( New York, 1963). Lincoln's appointment of Miller to the Supreme Court is treated by David M. Silver, Lincoln's Supreme Court ( Urbana, Ill., 1956).

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