George Martin (Michigan judge)

Michigan Supreme Court Justice George Martin.

George Martin (1815–December 15, 1867) was a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court from 1851 until his death in 1867.

MARTIN was a New Englander by birth; born in the State of Vermont, and graduated at Middlebury College in that state. He also pursued his legal studies in the state, up to the time of his admission to practice. These studies were pursued under the disciplining influences of the old English common-law system, up to that time, at least, rigidly adhered to in that state.

MARTIN for some years held the office of justice of the peace of the village of Grand Rapids. So meager were the proceeds of a legitimate law practice at that time, that lawyers of acknowledged ability were glad to accept almost any kind of extraneous help, such as insurance agencies and land agencies, to eke out a living.

By virtue of his office of circuit judge he was also a member of the then Supreme Court, and he continued the duties of both courts until the organization to which he was elected in the spring of 1857.

Martin, who had been a member of the court under both preceding dispensations, was the son of a tavern-keeper at Middlebury, Vt., where he was born in 1815 and graduated in 1833, coming to Michigan in 1836 and settling at Grand Rapids. He was prosecuting attorney for a time, but held no other important office until in 1851, at the age of thirty-six, he was made a judge of the Supreme Court to succeed Mundy, and continued for more than sixteen years to hold that post under the two following judicial systems. When the independent court was organized, he drew the chief-justiceship by lot, and afterwards was chosen to that post by his associates, and held it until his death, which took place Dec. 15, 1867, sixteen days before the close of his term. He had extra ordinary gifts, and with them the vices that were common to many of his predecessors and contemporaries, — intemperance and unthrift. The late Judge Campbell said of him not long before his own death, that he thought he had never known a man more naturally a lawyer than Judge Martin; that his mind was specially adapted to appreciate and apply legal distinctions, and that in elegance and clearness his opinions would compare with any that had ever been written. It is not inconsistent with this that he was indolent, and keen to detect in a record some technical defect that would enable him to get rid of the case without taking the trouble to study it. But he was wonderfully clear, and he was some times epigrammatic, as when he said, in Twitchell v. Blodgett, that he could not allow to judicial doubts more potency than to legislative certainty. For three years before his death he was so unfit to work that he filed but few opinions. Among them the most elaborate were those in which he dissented from the judgment of the court upon the questions of negro suffrage 1 and the soldier's right to vote;2 and in these he sought to accommodate the State Constitution to the dictates of natural justice. His place in the court was taken by his former colleague Graves.