was nominated as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, by President Chester A. Arthur, to a seat vacated by Ward Hunt, after two other candidates, Senator George F. Edmunds and former Senator Roscoe Conkling, declined. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on March 22, 1882, and was sworn into office on April 3, 1882. Blatchford thus became the first person to serve at all three levels of the federal judiciary—as a District Judge, a Circuit Judge, and a Supreme Court Justice. When he was nominated for the Supreme Court, it was estimated that his personal wealth exceeded $3 million (over $77 million in 2018), mostly held in real estate. Blatchford was an expert in admiralty law and patent law, and authored Blatchford and Howland's Admiralty Cases, which was considered the most complete work of its kind. During his eleven-year tenure on the High Court, he wrote 430 opinions and two dissents. 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. Constitution. Personal life In 1844, Blatchford was married to Caroline Frances Appleton (1817–1881) in Boston. Caroline was the daughter of Eben Appleton and Sarah (née Patterson) Appleton. Together, they had one son: Samuel Appleton Blatchford (1845–1905), also a lawyer who married Wilhelmina Bogart Conger (1848–1944), daughter of Hon. Abraham B. Conger, the namesake of Congers, New York. On what he thought was inside information, Blatchford sold all his shares of stock on the eve of the Battle of Fort Sumter and the decline in stock prices that took place at the onset of the American Civil War, thus preserving his personal fortune. Blatchford served as a trustee of Columbia College. In June 1893, he was stricken with paralysis at his home in Newport, Rhode Island on Greenough Place. Blatchford died at his home in Newport at age 73 on July 7, 1893. After a funeral service at the All Saints' Chapel in Newport conducted by Bishop Henry C. Potter (his brother-in-law Edward Tuckerman Potter's brother), his body was transported by train to New York City where he was buried at Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. In his will, which was drawn on June 15, 1876, he left $100,000 to Rachel Bliss Beckwith and $20,000 to Cordelia F.