Samuel M. Blatchford (March 9, 1820 – July 7, 1893) was an American attorney and judge who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from April 3, 1882, until his death in 1893.

[4] In 1854, he moved to New York City and started a law firm, Blatchford, Seward & Griswold, now known as Cravath, Swaine & Moore.

[6] On March 13, 1882, Blatchford was nominated as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, by President Chester A. Arthur, to a seat vacated by Ward Hunt,[6] after two other candidates, Senator George F. Edmunds and former Senator Roscoe Conkling, declined.

His most noteworthy opinions, Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Co. v. Minnesota, and Budd v. People of New York, were roundly criticized for their apparently contradictory conclusions about due process under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S.

[12] His grandfather, also named Samuel Blatchford, was born in England and was the first president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

The younger Samuel Blatchford was educated at Columbia College, where he joined the Philolexian Society and graduated when he was 17 years old.

Together, they had one son:[14] Samuel Appleton Blatchford (1845–1905), also a lawyer who married Wilhelmina Bogart Conger (1848–1944), daughter of Hon.

Upon his wife's death, one-third of her share of the realty went to Rachel Beckwith, a third to Julia Maria Potter, and the remaining third to his unmarried sister, Sophia Ethelinda Blatchford.