84 
Indiana University 
educated and studied medicine, but soon came to Kentucky and 
began to practice law. He was a profound student and rose to 
eminence, becoming a circuit judge at an early age. In 1820 
he was appointed a judge on the appellate bench, which posi- 
tion he held until he voluntarily resigned in 1828. His deci- 
sions showed great care, research, and fine analytical powers. 
He died at Frankfort in 1831.^^^ In a state which is noted 
for the ability and high rank of its bar and the production of 
able jurists, Boyle, Owsley, and Mills will always be honored 
and respected for their sacrifice, fearlessness, and consummate 
ability in maintaining the integrity of the law and, what was 
more important, as it seemed to them, protecting at a most 
critical time organized society itself. 
The decision of the court in the case of Blair vs. Williams 
was delivered October 8, 1823, by Chief Justice Boyle. In the 
case of Lapsley vs. Brashear, altho each judge delivered a 
separate opinion, they agreed in essentials. George Robert- 
son, a contemporary lawyer, and one of the most distinguished 
leaders thruout the whole contest started by these decisions, 
asserted : 
As was foreseen, those decisions produced very great exasperation 
and consequent denunciation of the court. The Judges were charged 
with arrogating supremacy over the popular will — their authority to 
declare void any act of the Legislature was denied, and they were de- 
nounced by the organs and stump orators of the dominant relief party 
as usurpers and self-made kings. No popular controversy, waged with- 
out bloodshed, was ever more absorbing or acrimonious than that which 
raged, like a hurricane, over Kentucky for about three years succeed- 
ing the promulgation of those judicial decisions.^^^ 
While it was not definitely known, on account of the de- 
struction by fire of the original laws, it was believed, as above 
intimated, that Judge George Bibb, himself a very able law- 
yer, had been the author of the replevin laws, now annulled. 
The people had sincerely believed them constitutional.^^® 
Judge Mills himself seems to have thought at first that they 
were, and two of the judges thought they were constitutional 
on contracts made after the passage of the acts but were not 
on all prior cases.^^® The federal Constitution forbids the 
Collins. History of Kentucky, II, 79, 80, gives a sketch of Judge Mills : Battle, 
Perrin, and KnifRn, crp. cit., 314. 
Robertson, Scrap Book, 49, 50 ; see also Collins, op. cit., II, 674 ; Shaler, Ken- 
tucky a Pioneer Commomcealth, 181, 182. 
Little, Ben Hardin, 102. 
Brown, op. cit., 23. 
