Justin Miller (judge)

Justin Miller (November 17, 1888 – January 17, 1973) was a lawyer and a federal appellate judge.

Miller was born in Crescent City, California in 1888. He got his B.A. from Stanford University in 1911, got a law degree from the University of Montana School of Law in 1913, and graduated from Stanford Law School with another law degree in 1914.

Once Miller had his law degree from Stanford, he immediately started in on the practice of law. He practiced for seven years, from 1914 through 1921 in Hanford, Fresno, and San Francisco, California. For three of those years, from 1915 to 1918, he was district attorney of Kings County, California. For the final two years of his private practice, from 1919 to 1921, he was the attorney and executive officer of the California State Commission on Immigration and Housing.

In 1921, Miller switched gears, moving from the private sector to academia. From 1921 to 1923, he was a professor of law at the University of Oregon. The next three years he spent at the University of Minnesota. In 1926, he returned to his home state to teach at the University of California. In 1927, he became a professor and dean at the University of Southern California Law School. In 1928 he became a member of the initial board of trustees of the Human Betterment Foundation, a eugenics organization. In 1930, he moved to the Duke University School of Law as a full-time dean.

In 1934, Miller again began switching gears, this time migrating from academia to the public sector. In 1934, while still dean at Duke Law School, he became a special assistant to the United States Attorney General; he left Duke the following year, and ceased to be a special assistant the following year. In early 1937, he was a member of the United States Board of Tax Appeals. Later that year, on August 20, President Franklin D. Roosevelt nominated him to be judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He was confirmed the next day, and commissioned two days later.

On September 30, 1945, Miller resigned his position on the court and returned to the private sector. He immediately became president of the Association of Broadcasters, a position he held until 1951, when he became chairman of the board and general counsel to the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters. From 1951 to 1952, Miller moonlighted on the United States Salary Stabilization Board.

He also served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Conference on Citizenship in 1954.

References

• Justin Miller at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.