From World War Pilot to Kenya's Chief Justice

Cecil Henry Ethelwood Miller was the second black chief justice of the Republic of Kenya after Justice Kitili Mwendwa and the seventh since independence, as indicated in the Judiciary records.

He was born in 1916 in Georgetown, the capital city of then British Guyana now known as Guyana.

During the second world war, Miller was a fighter jet pilot with the British Royal Airforce as well as a commonwealth welfare officer.

At the dusk of the war, he retired having attained the rank of flight lieutenant in the British Royal Airforce.

In 1952, Miller was admitted to the bar at London's Middle Temple. It is one of the four Inns of Court exclusively entitled to call their members to the English Bar as barristers, the others being the Inner Temple, Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn.

A year later, he returned to his home country, Guyana, where he served as a legal officer at the chambers of the state attorney general till 1956.

According to the website, cecilmiller.co.ke, he met the first president of Kenya, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta in London in the 1940s while he was a law student.

In 1964, Kenyatta, as the first president of the republic, due to a reported lack of qualified African judges invited Miller to serve as a High Court justice.

In what is evidently a distinguished career, Miller was appointed as the sole commissioner of the Kenya School of Law in 1970. That year, he was also a recipient of the Elder of the Burning Spear(EBS) honour.

After Mzee Kenyatta passed on in 1978, Miller was appointed to the Court of Appeal as a judge by President Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi.

Success at the court of appeal meant another appointment in 1982.

Miller was entrusted by Moi to chair the Law Reforms Committee, whose main obligation was to conduct a review of the country's laws and their contribution to socio-economic transformation since independence.

In 1986, Cecil Miller was appointed as the country's CJ, succeeding Chunilal Madan and was subsequently awarded the Elder of the Order of the Golden Heart.

He served at the helm of the Judiciary till September 4, 1989, when he succumbed to illness.

He was buried at his home in Moi's Bridge near Eldoret in a ceremony graced by President Moi and the then chairman of the law society of Kenya, Fred Ojiambo.

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