Roger B. Taney

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Roger B. Taney, photograph by Mathew Brady. (credit: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

(born March 17, 1777, Calvert county, Md., U.S. — died Oct. 12, 1864, Washington, D.C.) U.S. jurist. A lawyer from 1801, he served in Maryland's legislature before being named state attorney general (1827 – 31). He was appointed U.S. attorney general in 1831 by Pres. Andrew Jackson and achieved national prominence by opposing the Bank of the United States. In 1833 Jackson nominated him to serve as secretary of the treasury, but his appointment was rejected by the Senate. In 1835 Jackson selected him to serve as associate justice on the Supreme Court of the United States, and after the death of Chief Justice John Marshall, Jackson sought to have him confirmed as chief justice. Despite powerful resistance led by Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Daniel Webster, Taney was sworn in as chief justice in March 1836. His tenure (1836 – 64) remains the second longest in the Supreme Court's history. He is remembered principally for the Dred Scott decision (1857), in which he argued that a slave was not a citizen and could not sue in a federal court, that Congress had no power to exclude slavery from the territories, and that blacks could not become citizens. He is also noted for his opinion in Abelman v. Booth (1858), which denied state power to obstruct the processes of the federal courts, and in Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge (1837), which declared that rights not specifically conferred by a charter could not be inferred from the language of the document. Though he considered slavery an evil, he believed its elimination should be brought about gradually and chiefly by the states in which it existed.

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(b. Calvert County, Md., 17 Mar. 1777; d. Washington, D.C., 12 Dec. 1864; interred St. John the Evangelist Cemetery, Frederick, Md.), chief justice, 1836–1864. Roger B. Taney is best known as the author of one of the most infamous opinions ever written for the Supreme Court, the majority opinion in Dred Scott v. John F. A. Sandford (1857). It is perhaps no surprise, then, that many students of American constitutional and legal history have a passionate, almost instinctive, negative reaction to the mention of Taney's name. Yet when the American Bar Association asked professors of law, history, and political science to evaluate Supreme Court justices, they ranked Taney in the “great” category along with giants John Marshall, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Louis D. Brandeis. Obviously many people associate Taney with only a narrow phase of his career—indeed, with a single case—while overlooking virtually everything else.

Roger Brooke Taney was descended from a prominent and aristocratic tobacco‐growing family. The family tradition was conservative agrarian; its politics during Taney's formative years were pro‐Constitution, pro‐Federalist, and strongly supportive of the rights of private property. Being a second son (the eldest inherited the family plantation), Roger was educated and trained for the law. He practiced briefly in Annapolis and then in Frederick, where he developed into one of Maryland's foremost attorneys. That inevitably led to election to the state legislature, first as a member of the House of Delegates and then as a state senator. In short order he became a leader in Maryland's Federalist party.

In 1806 Taney married Anne Key, daughter of wealthy farmer John Ross Key. (Her brother, Francis Scott Key, achieved everlasting fame when he authored “The Star Spangled Banner” during the dramatic bombardment of Baltimore's Fort McHenry in the War of 1812.) Taney was Roman Catholic, his wife Episcopalian. They reconciled religious differences by agreeing that sons would be raised as Catholics, daughters as Episcopalians. The Taneys had six children who survived, all girls.

Early Career

During his years in the Maryland legislature, Taney found himself often involved in matters of finance and banking. Representing a rural agrarian constituency, he viewed with misgivings the monopolistic tendencies of Baltimore banks, though he supported others that dealt more favorably with farmers. Like many of his fellow Federalists, Taney's politics were somewhat erratic. Early a supporter of the national bank (he would turn against it after becoming a staunch Jacksonian), Taney nevertheless essentially endorsed states' rights. This showed especially in his views toward slavery. He freed his own slaves (whom he inherited), but he opposed giving the federal government authority to limit the institution, holding that that power rested in the individual states. These early‐held tenets would remain with him throughout his later judicial career.

By the time Taney's term in the Maryland senate expired in 1821, the Federalist party had fallen into disarray, both nationally and in the individual states. Taney soon found a new political home: the Democratic party of Andrew Jackson. By 1826 he emerged among his state's Democratic leaders, and he was elected Maryland's attorney general, a post he held for five years. Along with a creditable legal performance, Taney's handling of patronage earned him a reputation as a loyal Jacksonian. Accordingly, when the Peggy Eaton affair forced a reorganization of President Jackson's cabinet in 1831, Taney was summoned to Washington as attorney general of the United States.

As attorney general (1831–1833), Taney rendered opinions that comported with his earlier constitutional views and that presaged his later judicial tenets. A steadfast Jacksonian, he viewed moneyed and monopoly‐protected interests as threats to economic democracy, concepts starkly expressed in Jackson's famous bank veto message, which Taney helped draft. Taney believed unwaveringly in a divided state‐federal sovereignty and in the power of the Supreme Court to decide on the locus of undetermined concurrent powers. As to slavery, however, he authored an opinion that asserted unequivocally that except where the Constitution expressly granted power to the national authority, control over slavery rested exclusively with the states.

Taney's elevation to the Supreme Court climaxed a unique scenario of partisan Jacksonian politics. Having vetoed the recharter of the Second Bank of the United States, President Jackson sought to speed the “monster's” demise by transferring federal deposits into state banks. However, statutory authority to move those funds rested in the secretary of the treasury. Two secretaries resigned rather than acquiesce in Jackson's tactics. Finally, in 1833, the president shifted a more compliant Taney from Justice to Treasury, and he removed the funds. Taney's new post was an interim appointment; when Congress convened and the president requested the appointment be made permanent, the Senate rejected it. Taney thereupon returned to private practice in Baltimore. In the next two years, however, several vacancies opened on the Supreme Court, and Jackson sought to fill them with suitable nominees. He proposed Taney to replace Associate Justice Gabriel Duvall, but Jackson's opponents in the Senate mustered enough votes to reject the nomination. When Chief Justice John Marshall died in 1835, Jackson again submitted Taney's name, this time to be chief justice, along with the nomination of Philip P. Barbour to fill Duvall's still‐vacant seat. On 15 March 1836, after an executive session in which no records were kept, the Senate confirmed both nominations. Anti‐Jacksonians lamented that the Supreme Court had been sullied with a “political hack.”

Service on the Court

Taney succeeded a remarkable jurist, John Marshall, who left an extraordinary legacy that scholars have labeled “constitutional nationalism” and “national capitalism.” Taney's philosophy differed. He was a consummate Jacksonian. Though an aristocrat who inherited conservative tidewater traditions, he believed like Jackson in the new West and its agrarianism. He was dedicated also to Jacksonian economic principles, especially to the processes of economic growth and competition. (It is worth noting that where Marshall affected knee breeches, Taney wore long trousers—“sans culottes”—symbolic of democratization.) Taney's devotion to the Union, like Marshall's, was unequivocal; yet, unlike Marshall, he saw much merit in states' rights. After all, Taney grew up after the American Revolution and was not affected by the same driving nationalism that influenced Marshall.

Taney's appointment to the Supreme Court coincided with a general turnover of the Court's personnel, and within a few years Jacksonians dominated. This development alarmed those who feared that property rights would be at the mercy of state legislatures, but Taney proved to be a skillful and shrewd tactician who knew how to exercise judicial self‐restraint. He led the Court along pathways of pragmatism and compromise, virtually devoid of dogmatism—except on the issue of slavery. In the end, Taney proved as vigilant as his predecessor in maintaining federal authority over American economic development.

The new chief justice did not have long to wait before making his mark on American jurisprudence. In Charles River Bridge Company v. Warren Bridge Company (1837), the Court faced the unremitting dilemma of American democratic capitalism: the conflict between the rights of private property and those of society. Taney asserted a basic premise of American constitutional thought: “The object and end of all government is to promote the happiness and prosperity of the community. … While the rights of private property are sacredly guarded, we must not forget that the community also have rights, and that the happiness and well‐being of every citizen depends on their faithful preservation” (p. 420).

The problem was where to draw the line. Moderating Marshall's categorical primacy of vested rights, Taney stressed process over doctrine and purposefully adapted the rule of law to the historical realities of change and progress. Later jurists (with some notable exceptions) would reason in the same vein as commercial expansion and technology transformed American society from rural agricultural to urban industrial. Building on Taney's Jacksonian tenets, they would gradually formulate a philosophy that emphasized the social responsibilities of private property.

The Court's adaptation of process in Charles River Bridge paved the way for further assessments of Marshall's nation‐centered views of the Contract and Commerce Clauses. In a series of momentous decisions—which included New York v. Miln (1837), Bank of Augusta v. Earle (1839), Swift v. Tyson (1842), the License Cases (1847), the Passenger Cases (1849), Genesee Chief v. Fitzhugh (1852), and Cooley v. Board of Wardens of the Port of Philadelphia (1852), among others—the Taney Court asserted a concurrent federal‐state relationship that warranted state supervision as long as it did not interfere with a federal statute. That freed the new technology from monopolistic restraints of established corporations and outmoded charters. Without weakening federal regulative powers, except for negating exclusivity, these cases broadened the sphere of laissez‐faire and competition and raised the status of state involvement in contract and corporate affairs, thereby allowing the burgeoning West and the new technology to lead the nation reasonably untrammeled into the future (see Commerce Power).

Contrary to considerable popular misconception, then, Taney did not reverse the Marshall trend and institute radical agrarian egalitarianism and state sovereignty. On the contrary, he preserved and refined the main lines of Marshall's constitutional law, opened economic opportunities for many Americans, and retained a strong national power redefined to accommodate a judicious dual sovereignty.

Nevertheless, Taney is remembered most for Dred Scott. Yet that decision comported with his earlier constitutional record on slavery, including opinions rendered as attorney general. In several cases preceding Dred Scott, Taney and his colleagues cautiously refrained from passing on the fundamental issue of slavery, exercising a modified judicial restraint by stressing process. In Groves v. Slaughter (1841) and in Strader v. Graham (1851), for instance, the Court evaded major substantive issues while striking a blow for state determination of the status of slavery. (Yet in Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 1842, Taney supported federal supremacy when state law interfered with Congressional fugitive‐slave legislation.)

By 1857, however, the slavery issue had reached explosive proportions. Even though he saw nothing positive about the institution of slavery itself, Taney withal was a southern gentleman imbued with southern values, and here was an opportunity to settle the issue. Furthermore, the majority of the Court was southern and proslavery. The result was Dred Scott: (1) blacks could not be citizens of the United States; (2) slaves were property protected by the Constitution; and (3) a state could decide for itself if someone formerly emancipated should revert to slavery within that state's boundaries. Coming when forces already were setting the stage for civil war, Taney's inflammatory opinion of the Court added enough fuel to the fire that it became unextinguishable.

Taney lived for seven years after Dred Scott, but the rancor engendered by that decision dogged him for the rest of his life. Even though he remained a loyal Unionist in the Civil War and sought to protect constitutional rights precariously stretched during that conflict, his effectiveness on the Court waned, just as did that of the Court itself, both casualties of Dred Scott. Taney died a weary octogenarian whose final years suffered from anger, bitterness, and frustration.

Taney brought infamy upon himself because he viewed the alleged inferiority of blacks as an axiom of both law and the Constitution, a legal discrimination that he saw sanctioned even in the Declaration of Independence. No wonder so many react negatively to his constitutionalism. Yet when scholars evaluate Taney's overall contributions to American jurisprudence, they rank him, in spite of Dred Scott, among the greats.

See also State Sovereignty and States' Rights.

Bibliography

• Frank Otto Gatell, Roger B. Taney, in The Justices of the United States Supreme Court 1789–1969, edited by Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel, vol. 1 (1969), pp. 635–655.
• Walker Lewis, Without Fear or Favor: A Biography of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney (1965).
• Carl Brent Swisher, Roger B. Taney (1935).
• Samuel Tyler, Memoir of Roger Brooke Taney, LL.D. (1872)

— Walter Ehrlich

Roger Brooke Taney (1777-1864) was an American political leader and as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court greatly contributed to constitutional law.

Roger B. Taney was born in Calvert County, Md., on March 17, 1777, into a landed, slaveholding family that proudly traced its line back five generations. He received the rudiments of a classical education from a private tutor and at the age of 15 entered Dickinson College. There he found little to upset his aristocratic prejudices, but he did gain an abiding love of learning and graduated with honors in 1795.

As a younger son with no prospect of inheriting the family estate, young Taney chose the profession of law, with his eye on politics. In 1799 he was admitted to the bar and served one term as a Federalist representative in the state legislature. In private practice he quickly distinguished himself as one of Maryland's most promising young lawyers. He married Anne Key on Jan. 7, 1806, and she and their seven children were a constant solace throughout Taney's strenuous public life.

In Jackson's Cabinet

From 1816 through 1821 Taney served as state senator. When new parties emerged from the confusion of the 1820s, Taney cast his lot with the forces of Andrew Jackson. In 1831 he resigned his office as state attorney general, which he had held since 1827, in order to accept an appointment in President Jackson's Cabinet as attorney general. Among his opinions as attorney general, two revealed his stand on slavery: one supported South Carolina's law prohibiting free Blacks from entering the state, and one argued that Blacks could not be citizens. In 1833, as secretary of the Treasury, Taney ordered an end to the deposit of Federal money in the Second Bank of the United States, an act which killed the institution.

Aware of Taney's ability and certain of his political orthodoxy, President Jackson, on Dec. 28, 1835, appointed him to the office of chief justice of the United States, left vacant by the death of John Marshall. Taney was instrumental in shaping constitutional law to fit the new age. His opinion in Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge (1837) set the tone of the new Court. The Massachusetts Legislature had chartered a new, prospectively toll-free bridge across the Charles River. The old bridge company contended that its original charter implied monopoly rights. Taney's opinion refused to recognize the doctrine of implied contract, thus giving the states more latitude to legislate in the public interest. Taney also argued that the refusal to grant monopoly by implication would encourage economic progress by preventing entrenched capital from thwarting new corporate development.

Taney was a moderate, standing between old nationalists on the Court and the more extreme states'-rightists. The Chief Justice also made clear that he was a firm friend of private property. Despite his suspicion of corporate power (his opinion in Bank of Augusta v. Earle, 1839), he broadened the interstate operation of corporations by holding that a corporations chartered in one state had the right to do business in another unless positively prohibited by that state.

Personal and Professional Qualities

Thin, stooped, and sallow, Taney did not fit a heroic mold; but his mind was acute, his pen lucid. His patience, tact, and ability were instrumental in overcoming personal and doctrinal divisions among the justices, and though the Court was frequently divided, it continued to administer the law effectively. Under Taney's leadership the Court showed more tolerance of legislative power than it had under Marshall, but it did not surrender its hard-won powers to decide.

The issue of slavery was the downfall of the Court and detracted permanently from the image of Taney's states-manship. In Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857) Taney wrote the majority opinion for a bitterly divided Court which unwisely confronted all the explosive political questions in the case. Blacks, he said in a racist vein that has since been irrevocably associated with his name, could not be a citizen of the United States because he was recognized as inherently unequal by the Constitution. Congress, moreover, could not prohibit slavery in the territories because the 5th Amendment to the Constitution protected citizens in the possession of their property, and slaves were property.

Reaction to Taney's opinion was vehement. Almost overnight the Court fell to a new low in the opinion of the majority of Americans, who were now antislavery in sentiment. The years following the Dred Scott case until Taney's death on Oct. 12, 1864, were sad ones for the Chief Justice. Only after the passions of the Civil War had receded was it apparent that, the Dred Scott case excepted, Taney in his own way had contributed almost as much to the development of constitutional government as his great predecessor.

Further Reading

The standard biography, Carl Swisher, Roger B. Taney (1935), relates Taney's political-economic experience to his philosophy and judicial career. Walker Lewis, Without Fear or Favor: A Biography of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney (1965), supplements Swisher by concentrating on Taney's personal qualities. Samuel Tyler, Memoir of Roger Brooke Taney (1872), though old, still contains useful information, as does Charles W. Smith, Jr., Roger B. Taney: Jacksonian Jurist (1936). Two general accounts of the Supreme Court that include much information on Taney's legal career are Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History (3 vols., 1922; rev. ed., 2 vols., 1926), and Charles G. Haines and Foster Sherwood, The Role of the Supreme Court in American Government and Politicsvol. 2: 1835-1864 (1957). A work in progress, Holmes Devisee, History of the Supreme Court, will devote one volume to the Taney Court.

Additional Sources

Siegel, Martin, The Taney court, 1836-1864, Millwood, N.Y.: Associated Faculty Press, 1987.

• Born: Mar. 17, 1777, Calvert County, Md.
• Education: Dickinson College, B.A., 1975; read law in the office of Judge Jeremiah Chase in Annapolis, Md.
• Previous government service: Maryland House of Delegates, 1799–1800; Maryland Senate, 1816–21; attorney general of Maryland, 1827–31; U.S. attorney general, 1831–33; acting U.S. secretary of war, 1831; U.S. secretary of the Treasury, 1833–34 (appointment rejected by the Senate)
• Appointed by President Andrew Jackson Dec. 28, 1835; replaced John Marshall, who died
• Supreme Court term: confirmed by the Senate Mar. 15, 1836, by a 29–15 vote; served until Oct. 12, 1864
• Died: Oct. 12, 1864, Washington, D.C.Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney is linked inseparably with his infamous opinion in Scott v. Sandford (1857), which sanctioned slavery and denied the rights of black Americans. Yet Taney freed his own slaves, which he inherited. He also has been ranked by legal scholars as one of the great justices in Supreme Court history.

Roger Taney began his career in the federal government as a staunch Jacksonian Democrat. He served President Andrew Jackson's interests ably as U.S. attorney general, acting secretary of war, and secretary of the Treasury.

In 1835, President Jackson appointed Taney to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. The Senate, however, rejected the appointment because of disagreements with Taney's performance as secretary of the Treasury. A few months later, Chief Justice John Marshall died, and President Jackson turned again to Taney. This time the Senate confirmed the President's appointment, after a bitter debate, and Roger Taney succeeded John Marshall as chief justice of the United States.

Chief Justice Taney's greatest opinion was Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge (1837). Writing for the Court, Taney rejected the claim of owners of the Charles River Bridge that their charter, granted by the state of Massachusetts, implicitly gave them a monopoly and thereby prevented the state from granting rights to another company to build a second bridge over the same river. The Charles River Bridge Company, which charged passengers a toll for crossing its bridge, did not want any competition from a second company. In deciding against the monopoly claims of the Charles River Bridge Company, Taney sought to balance private property rights with the public good. He wrote: “The object and end of government is to promote the happiness and prosperity of the community…. While the rights of private property are sacredly guarded, we must not forget that the community also has rights, and that the happiness and well-being of every citizen depends on their faithful preservation.”

With this decision, Chief Justice Taney defined a major, continuing issue of American constitutional law. From Taney's time until today, jurists have tried, as he did, to balance the sometimes competing claims of private property rights and the community's rights.

Taney's tenure on the Court was marked by growing concerns to protect state government powers and rights within the federal system. This trend was in sharp contrast to the Marshall Court's persistent concern with establishing federal government supremacy over the states. The Taney Court emphasized the sovereignty of the states over matters within their jurisdiction, as provided by the U.S. Constitution, such as maintaining public order, building public facilities, and regulating local businesses.

Taney's conception of states' rights shaped his decisions about slavery. He held that the power to maintain slavery or to free slaves belonged solely to the state governments. His views were expressed memorably and disastrously in Scott v. Sandford (1857). In this decision, Taney asserted that black Americans could not be citizens of the United States; that the U.S. Constitution protected private property rights, including the right to own slaves; that each state had exclusive power to make decisions about slavery or emancipation of slaves; and that the federal government had no power to ban slavery in the territories of the United States. The Dred Scott decision fanned the flames of conflict between the so-called slave states and free states and was one important cause of the Civil War. .

See also Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge; Federalism; Scott v. Sandford

Sources

• Walker Lewis, Without Fear or Favor: A Biography of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965).:
• R. Kent Newmyer, The Supreme Court Under Marshall and Taney (Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1986).
• Carl B. Swisher, Roger B. Taney (New York: Macmillan, 1974)

(1777-1864), chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Born to a wealthy Maryland slaveholding family, Taney was admitted to the bar in 1799. An active Federalist and defender of the landed gentry in his early years, he supported Andrew Jackson in the 1820s. As Jackson's attorney general and then secretary of the treasury, Taney played a central role in the president's struggle against the Bank of the United States. He helped draft Jackson's Bank veto message (contributing the passage that denied that the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution bound the president) and, as treasury secretary, carried out the removal of federal funds from the Bank.

When John Marshall died in 1835, Jackson rewarded his loyal ally with the chief justiceship. Although denounced as a "political hack" by Senate Whigs who delayed confirmation for eight months, Taney proved a distinguished chief justice and made lasting contributions to American constitutional law. Nevertheless, he lacked his predecessor's power of persuasion and failed to dominate the Court as Marshall had.

Suspicious of corporations and concerned about federal interference with slavery, Taney was much more inclined than Marshall to support state power and to emphasize the states' role in the federal system. His landmark opinion in the Charles River Bridge case (1837) struck a balance between private rights and state regulatory authority. In commerce clause cases, he helped persuade the Court to accept state power over local matters that fell within the realm of interstate commerce. Moreover, he skillfully employed the concept of dual sovereignty to reserve to the states broad authority within their borders.

Taney nevertheless enlarged the role of the federal courts in American government. During his tenure, the Court extended federal admiralty jurisdiction to inland waterways, broadened the federal courts' jurisdiction over corporations, and allowed them to create a uniform body of federal commercial law. In Ableman v. Booth (1859), a case involving fugitive slaves, Taney's masterful opinion shielded federal courts from encroachments on their jurisdiction by state tribunals.

But Taney proved unable to navigate the treacherous shoals of the slavery controversy. As sectional conflict intensified during the 1850s, he attempted to use the Court to protect the South and its peculiar institution. In Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), he ruled that blacks were not citizens (even if they were free), denied Congress authority to prevent the expansion of slavery by excluding it from the territories, and even suggested that Congress had an obligation to protect slavery within its jurisdiction. Taney's opinion--polemical in nature, resting on a strained interpretation of the Constitution, and blind to the limits of judicial power--brought the Court and its author into disrepute and ultimately proved unenforceable.

Remaining on the bench until his death in 1864, Taney privately supported secession and opposed Republican war measures. He declared Abraham Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus unconstitutional in a circuit court opinion that the president ignored. He also wrote private memoranda striking down the Emancipation Proclamation and the conscription and legal tender acts. Because no cases concerning these matters came before him, however, these opinions remained unpublished, silent memorials to the antebellum constitutional order shattered by the war.

Bibliography:

Don E. Feherenbacher, The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics (1978); Carl Brent Swisher, Roger B. Taney (1935).

Author:

Donald Nieman

See also Ableman v. Booth; Bank of the United States; Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge ; Dred Scott Case; Nullification Controversy; Secession; Supreme Court.

Early Life

Taney was born of a wealthy slave-owning family of tobacco farmers. He was admitted to the bar in 1799 and as a Federalist served (1799-1800) one term in the Maryland house of delegates. He temporarily broke with the Federalist leadership over the party's opposition to the War of 1812, but he gained control of the Federalists in Maryland and in 1816 was elected to a five-year term in the state senate. Having built up a large practice, he moved (1823) from Frederick to Baltimore.

In 1824 he permanently abandoned the Federalists to support Andrew Jackson. President Jackson appointed (1831) Taney to the post of Attorney General to assist in the struggle with the Bank of the United States. Taney wrote much of Jackson's message vetoing (1832) the act that rechartered the bank, and, when Louis McLane and William J. Duane refused to withdraw federal funds from the bank, Taney was appointed (1833) Secretary of the Treasury and effected the withdrawal.

Chief Justice

The Senate, incensed by Taney's actions as Secretary of the Treasury, refused in 1835 to ratify his nomination as an associate justice of the Supreme Court, but the following year, somewhat changed in membership, the Senate ratified his appointment as chief justice. In the Charles River Bridge Case (1837) Taney declared that a state charter of a private business conferred only privileges expressly granted and that any ambiguity must be decided in favor of the state. His opinion outraged conservatives, who were opposed to any modification of the view that charters issued by states are inviolable, a view established by Taney's predecessor, John Marshall, in the Dartmouth College Case (1819).

Taney felt that the police power of a state entitled it to make reasonable regulatory laws even if they appeared to override provisions of the U.S. Constitution; thus, he held that, although Congress alone had the power to regulate interstate commerce, a state might exclude a corporation organized elsewhere. In sustaining fugitive slave laws, however, Taney denied to free states the power of refusing obedience to federal statutes requiring the surrender of escaped slaves.

Taney's support of the slavery laws was most clearly expressed in the Dred Scott Case (1857). Here he held that slaves (and even the free descendants of slaves) were not citizens and might not sue in the federal courts, and that Congress could not forbid slavery in the territories of the United States. Opposition to the second holding was furiously expressed by the Republicans, and when Lincoln became President he considered Taney an arch foe. In the Civil War, Taney in vain ruled against Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus (see Merryman, ex parte). There was much antipathy to Taney at his death, but there has been a gradual increase in appreciation of his contributions to constitutional law.

Bibliography

See biographies by B. C. Steiner (1922, repr. 1970), C. B. Swisher (1935, repr. 1961), and W. Lewis (1965); R. K. Newmyer, The Supreme Court under Marshall and Taney (1969).

Roger Brooke Taney served as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1836 to 1864. During his almost thirty years on the bench, Taney sought to encourage economic growth and competition by rendering decisions that reshaped the traditional law concerning property rights and commerce. Although he served with great distinction on the Court, he is best known as the author of the infamous decision in Dred Scott's case, Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393, 15 L. Ed. 691 (1857). This decision fueled sectional hostility and moved the nation closer to civil war.

Taney was born on March 17, 1777, in Calvert County, Maryland. A descendant of an aristocratic tobacco-growing family, Taney graduated from Dickinson College in 1795, studied law, and was admitted to the Maryland bar in 1799. That same year he was elected to a one-year term in the Maryland House of Delegates. Taney practiced briefly in Annapolis before settling in Frederick, where he soon was recognized as a distinguished attorney.

Taney was elected to the Maryland Senate in 1816 as a member of the Federalist party. Despite the party's belief in a strong national government, Taney endorsed states' rights. By the time he left the Senate in 1821, the Federalist party was on the verge of extinction. Taney switched his allegiance to the Democratic party and soon became an influential figure in the Maryland state party leadership. He was elected Maryland attorney general in 1826 and served until 1831.

President Andrew Jackson appointed Taney U.S. attorney general in 1831. Taney supported the president's opposition to rechartering the Second Bank of the United States and helped him write the veto message. Jackson and the Democrats saw the bank as a dangerous institution that would enhance the power of the national government. Having vetoed the rechartering, in 1833 Jackson ordered Secretary of the Treasury William J. Duane to withdraw the deposits of the federal government from the bank, but Duane resigned instead. Jackson then appointed Taney secretary of the treasury so that he could carry out the order. Confirmation of Taney's appointment as treasury secretary was frustrated by members of the Whig party in the U.S. Senate, but by that time Taney had succeeded in distributing the federal funds among several state banks.

Taney returned to private practice, but President Jackson wanted him on the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1835 he nominated Taney as an associate justice, but the Senate, still disgruntled about the bank deposit issue, refused to confirm the appointment. The composition of the Senate soon changed, however, and upon the death of John Marshall in 1836, Taney was nominated and confirmed as chief justice.

In his first major opinion as chief justice, in the case of Charles River Bridge v. Proprietors of Warren Bridge, 36 U.S. (11 Pet.) 420, 9 L. Ed. 773 (1837), Taney wrote for the majority of a divided Court. Taney decided that a franchise to operate a toll bridge that had been granted by the state of Massachusetts in the late eighteenth century, in the absence of explicit provisions, could not be construed as granting a monopoly to the toll bridge operator. Therefore, when the Massachusetts state legislature later granted another franchise to operate a competing toll bridge nearby, the legislature did not violate Article I, Section 10, of the U.S. Constitution, which forbids states from impairing the obligation of contracts. The opinion demonstrated Taney's belief that economic development could best be promoted and the public good most expeditiously furthered by fostering competition.

Until Dred Scott Taney had demonstrated a reluctance to make the Supreme Court the arbiter of national political issues. By the mid-1850s, however, the national debate over slavery had almost reached the boiling point. Taney believed a decision by the Court would have a tempering effect on the country. He was clearly wrong.

Dred Scott was a slave owned by an army surgeon, John Emerson, who resided in Missouri. In 1836 Emerson took Scott to Fort Snelling, in what is now Minnesota, but was then a territory in which slavery had been expressly forbidden by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. In 1846 Scott sued for his freedom in a Missouri state court, arguing that his residence in a free territory released him from slavery. The Missouri Supreme Court rejected his argument, and Scott appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Court heard arguments in Dred Scott in 1855 and 1856. The Court could have properly disposed of the case on narrow procedural grounds, but Taney decided that the Court needed to address the status of slavery in the territories. He wrote a tortuous opinion, arguing that because of the prevailing attitudes toward slavery and African Americans in 1787-1789, when the Constitution was drafted and ratified, a slave was not and never could become a federal citizen. In addition, Taney ruled that the free descendants of slaves were not federal citizens and that property in slaves was entitled to such protection that Congress could not constitutionally forbid slavery in the territories.

The immediate effect of the Dred Scott decision was to convince abolitionists that the South and the Supreme Court planned to impose slavery throughout the Union. Taney was attacked as a former slave owner (though he had freed his slaves, whom he had inherited) and was called wicked, cowardly, and hypocritical. With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, it became clear that Taney's decision had failed to achieve its essential purpose.

Taney remained loyal to the Union during the Civil War, yet his effectiveness and that of the Court had been seriously compromised by Dred Scott. Taney sought to protect constitutional rights during the Civil War, ruling that even in wartime the executive branch and the military had no power to suspend constitutional protections (Ex Parte Merryman, 17 Fed. Cas. 144 [1861]). Though Taney saw the Court as a restraining influence on the exercise of arbitrary power by other branches of government, his efforts were ineffective. The Radical Republican-controlled Congress and President Abraham Lincoln ignored the pronouncements of the Court. From Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil Rights Act of 1866 (14 Stat. 27) through the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, the Republicans repeatedly repudiated Dred Scott. Nevertheless, Taney continued to hold the office of chief justice until his death on October 12, 1864, in Washington, D.C.

Roger Taney
5th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
In office March 15, 1836 – October 12, 1864
Nominated by	Andrew Jackson
Preceded by	John Marshall
Succeeded by	Salmon Chase
12th United States Secretary of the Treasury
In office September 23, 1833 – June 25, 1834
President	Andrew Jackson
Preceded by	William Duane
Succeeded by	Levi Woodbury
11th United States Attorney General
In office July 20, 1831 – November 14, 1833
President	Andrew Jackson
Preceded by	John Berrien
Succeeded by	Benjamin Butler
United States Secretary of War Acting
In office June 18, 1831 – August 1, 1831
President	Andrew Jackson
Preceded by	John Eaton
Succeeded by	Lewis Cass
Personal details
Born	March 17, 1777(1777-03-17) Calvert County, Maryland, United States
Died	October 12, 1864(1864-10-12) (aged 87) Washington, D.C., United States
Political party	Democratic Party (1828–1864)
Other political affiliations	Federalist Party (Before 1828)
Spouse(s)	Anne Key
Alma mater	Dickinson College
Profession	Lawyer Judge
Religion	Roman Catholicism
Signature

Roger Brooke Taney ( /ˈtɔːni/ taw-nee; March 17, 1777 – October 12, 1864) was the fifth Chief Justice of the United States, holding that office from 1836 until his death in 1864. He was the first Roman Catholic to hold that office or sit on the Supreme Court of the United States. He was also the eleventh United States Attorney General. He is most remembered for delivering the majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), that ruled, among other things, that African Americans, having been considered inferior at the time the Constitution was drafted, were not part of the original community of citizens and could not be considered citizens of the United States.

Taney was a Jacksonian Democrat when he became Chief Justice. Described by his and President Andrew Jackson's critics as "[a] supple, cringing tool of Jacksonian power,"^[1] Taney was a believer in states' rights but also the Union; a slaveholder who regretted the institution and manumitted his slaves.^[2] From Prince Frederick, Maryland, he had practiced law and politics simultaneously and succeeded in both. After abandoning Federalism as a losing cause, he rose to the top of the state's Jacksonian machine. As U.S. Attorney General (1831–1833) and then Secretary of the Treasury (1833–1834), Taney became one of Andrew Jackson's closest advisers.

". . . He brought to the Chief Justiceship a high intelligence and legal acumen, kindness and humility, patriotism, and a determination to be a great Chief Justice that enabled him to mold the modest raw material of the Court into an effective and prestigious institution."^[3]

Taney died during the final months of the American Civil War on the same day that his home state of Maryland abolished slavery.

Contents 1 Early life and career 2 Marriage and family 3 Career 4 Jackson Administration 4.1 Treasury nomination 4.2 Supreme Court nominations 5 The Taney Court, 1836–1864 5.1 Dred Scott decision 5.2 Lincoln Presidency 5.3 Final years 6 Death and legacy 7 See also 8 Notes 9 Further reading 10 External links

Early life and career

Taney was born March 17, 1777. He was the third child and the second son of seven (four sons and three daughters) born to a slaveholding family of tobacco planters in Calvert County, Maryland. He received a rudimentary education from a series of private tutors. After instructing him for a year, his last tutor David English recommended that Taney was ready for college.^[4] At the age of 15 he entered Dickinson College, graduating with honors in 1795.^[5] As a younger son with no prospect of inheriting the family plantation, Taney chose the profession of law. He read law and in 1799 was admitted to the bar. He quickly distinguished himself as one of Maryland's most promising young lawyers.

Marriage and family

Taney married Anne Key on Jan. 7, 1806. They had seven children together.

Career

In 1799, the same year he began practicing as an attorney, Taney was elected to the Maryland state legislature, where he served one term as a Federalist. Returning to private practice, he served as a director of the State Bank Branch in Frederick, Maryland from 1810 to 1815.

He was elected a state Senator in 1816, serving until 1821 - this time as a Democrat, since the Federalist party had dissolved. He was also a director of the Frederick County Bank from 1818 to 1823, when he returned to private practice. When the 1824 presidential election divided the Democratic Party between supporters and opponents of Andrew Jackson, Taney became a staunch Jacksonian Democrat. He was elected Attorney General of Maryland in 1827, but resigned in 1831, first to serve as acting United States Secretary of War, and then to accept President Jackson's nomination as Attorney General of the United States.

Jackson Administration

Among Taney's opinions as attorney general, two revealed his stand on slavery: one supported South Carolina's law prohibiting free Blacks from entering the state, and one argued that Blacks could not be citizens. In 1833, as secretary of the Treasury, Taney ordered an end to the deposit of Federal money in the Second Bank of the United States, an act which killed the institution.

Treasury nomination

Taney was the first nominee to the United States Executive Cabinet to be rejected by the United States Senate when his recess appointment as Secretary of the Treasury failed in a vote of 28-18.^[6] Rather than return to the position of Attorney General, however, Taney returned to Maryland and resumed private practice.

Supreme Court nominations

In January 1835 Jackson, in defiance of the Senate's rejection of Taney as Treasury Secretary, nominated Taney as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court to replace the retiring Gabriel Duvall. The Senate was scheduled to vote on Taney's confirmation on the closing day of the session that month, but the anti-Jackson Whigs who dominated the Senate blocked the vote and introduced a motion to abolish the open seat on the Court. The latter was unsuccessful, but the Whigs succeeded in preventing Taney's confirmation to the Court. (The seat was then left open for over a year until Philip Pendleton Barbour was confirmed to it in 1836.)

Two factors intervened to help Taney onto the Court, however: after the 1834 elections, Jacksonian Democrats controlled the Senate and, during the 1835 recess, Chief Justice John Marshall died following a stage coach accident. On December 28, 1835, Jackson sent the nomination of Taney as Chief Justice to the Senate, which had convened that month; after a long and bitter battle with considerable opposition from Whig leaders Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Jackson's former Vice President John C. Calhoun, Taney was confirmed on March 15, 1836 and received his commission the same day.

The Taney Court, 1836–1864

Unlike Marshall, who had supported a broad role for the federal government in the area of economic regulation, Taney and the other justices appointed by Jackson more often favored the power of the states. In a series of Commerce Clause cases exemplified by Mayor of the City of New York v. Miln (1837), wherein the challenged New York statute required masters of incoming ships to report information on all passengers they brought into the country, i.e. age, health, last legal residence, etc. The question before the Taney court was whether or not the state statute undercut Congress's authority to regulate commerce; or was it a police measure, as New York claimed, fully within the authority of the state. Taney and his colleagues sought to devise a more nuanced means of accommodating competing federal and state claims of regulatory power. The Court ruled in favor of New York.

The Taney Court also presided over the case of slaves who had taken over the Spanish schooner Amistad. Fellow Justice Joseph Story wrote the Court's decision and opinion. Taney sided with Story's opinion but left no written record of his own in regard to the Amistad case.

In Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge, the operators of the Charles River Bridge in Boston sued the operators of a new competing bridge, claiming that the state had granted them a monopoly to collect tolls. Taney argued that, although the Massachusetts legislature had granted the Charles River Bridge a charter to build a bridge, the object of the government was to promote general happiness, which took precedence over the rights of monopolies.^[7] Taney also held that the Massachusetts legislature never explicitly granted the Charles River Bridge a monopoly and that all monopolies must be explicitly granted to exist, following one of Marshall's precedents. In addition to this Taney declared that one session of a state legislature is not bound by previous decisions of the legislature.^[8]

In Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842), the Taney Court agreed to hear a case regarding slavery, slaves, slave owners, and States' Rights. It held that the Constitutional prohibition against state laws that would emancipate any "person held to service or labor in [another] state" barred Pennsylvania from punishing a Maryland man who had seized a former slave and her child, and had taken them back to Maryland without seeking an order from the Pennsylvania courts permitting the abduction. In his opinion for the Court, Justice Joseph Story held not only that states were barred from interfering with enforcement of federal fugitive slave laws, but that they also were barred from assisting in enforcing those laws.

Taney was instrumental in the case of John Merryman, a citizen of the state of Maryland who, in the early years of the American Civil War, was accused of burning bridges and destroying telegraph poles. He was seized in his home at 2:00 am by military authorities and taken to Fort McHenry. His was the first arrest under President Abraham Lincoln's suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

Dred Scott decision

In 1857 the Court heard Dred Scott v. Sandford; its decision is considered to have indirectly been a cause of the Civil War. Despite the willingness of five members of the Court to dismiss the lawsuit by Dred Scott, on grounds situated in Missouri law's governing who could sue and be sued, Taney wrote what became regarded as the opinion for the Court. His decision presented his version of the origins of the United States and the Constitution as the basis for his holding that Congress had no authority to restrict the spread of slavery into federal territories, and that such previous attempts to restrict slavery's spread as the 1820 Missouri Compromise were unconstitutional.^[9]

One of the two dissenters, Justice Benjamin Curtis, was so upset by the decision that he resigned from the court.^[10]

The Dred Scott v. Sandford decision was widely condemned at the time by opponents of slavery as an illegitimate use of judicial power. Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party accused the Taney Court of carrying out the orders of the "slave power" and of conspiring with President James Buchanan to undo the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Current scholarship supports that second charge, as it appears that Buchanan put significant political pressure behind the scenes on Justice Robert Grier to obtain at least one vote from a justice from outside the South to support the Court's sweeping decision.

Taney's intemperate language only added to the fury of those who opposed the decision. As he explained the Court's ruling, he noted that African Americans, free or slave, had not been considered part of the original community of people covered by the Constitution, but people of "an inferior order". Because they were originally excluded, he contended that neither the Court nor Congress could now extend rights of citizens to them.^[9]

The full text of Taney's statement from the Dred Scott ruling:

“

It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion in regard to that unfortunate race which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and when the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted; but the public history of every European nation displays it in a manner too plain to be mistaken. They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far unfit that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.[9]

”

Chief Justice Taney

Author Tom Burnam, in Dictionary of Misinformation (1975), commented (pp. 257–58) that "it seems unfair to quote the remark above out of a context which includes the phrase 'that unfortunate race,' etc."

Taney's own attitudes toward slavery were more complex. He emancipated his own slaves and gave pensions to those who were too old to work. In 1819, he defended a Methodist minister who had been indicted for inciting slave insurrections by denouncing slavery in a camp meeting. In his opening argument in that case, Taney condemned slavery as "a blot on our national character."

Taney's attitudes toward slavery appeared to harden in support. By the time he wrote his opinion in Dred Scott, he labeled the opposition to slavery as "northern aggression," a popular phrase among Southerners. He hoped that a Supreme Court decision declaring federal restrictions on slavery in the territories unconstitutional would put the issue beyond the realm of political debate. His decision galvanized Northern opposition to slavery while splitting the Democratic Party on sectional lines.

Many abolitionists — and some supporters of slavery — believed that Taney was prepared to rule that the states had no power to bar slaveholders from bringing their property into free states, and that laws of free states providing for the emancipation of slaves brought into their territory were unconstitutional. A case, Lemmon v. New York, that presented that issue was slowly making its way to the Supreme Court in the years after the Dred Scott decision. The outbreak of the American Civil War denied Taney the chance to rule on the issue, as the Commonwealth of Virginia seceded and no longer recognized the Court's authority.

Lincoln Presidency

Taney personally administered the oath of office to Lincoln, his most prominent critic, on March 4, 1861.^[11] He continued to trouble Lincoln during the three years he remained Chief Justice after the beginning of the war. After Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus in parts of Maryland, Taney ruled as Circuit Judge in Ex parte Merryman (1861) that only Congress had the power to take this action. Some scholars argue that Lincoln made an aborted attempt to arrest Taney in response to his habeas corpus decision, though the evidence is sparse. Lincoln ignored the court's order and continued to have arrests made without the privilege of the writ. Merryman was eventually released without charges. Some Radical Republicans in Congress considered initiating impeachment charges against Taney.^{[citation needed]}

Final years

Taney, whose health had never been good, spent his final years in worsening health, near poverty, and despised by both North and South. Since the Merryman ruling, he was all but ignored by Lincoln and his cabinet. Taney lost his Maryland estates to the Civil War and suffered from his poverty:

"All my life I have felt the obligation to pay my debts . . . and my inability to do so at this time is mortifying." He explained that his rent had been raised from $4,000 to $8,000 but that he had been prevented from moving to cheaper quarters due to the failing health of his daughter Ellen, who lived with him. The miserable financial situation was maddening to him. . . . A few months later Taney wrote ". . . about peaceful, bygone days . . . walks in the fresh country air. But my walking days are over." ^[12]

(Note: Taney's yearly salary was approximately $10,000. In the inflationary Washington, D.C. of this time, the yearly rent for his boardinghouse rooms had jumped from $4,000 to $8,000, with no increase in pay.)

On October 13, 1864 the clerk of the Supreme Court announced that "the great and good Chief Justice is no more." He had died at the age of eighty-seven the previous evening, having served for more than twenty-eight years as the fifth Chief Justice of the United States.

President Lincoln made no public statement. Of his cabinet, Lincoln and three members —Secretary of State William H. Seward, Attorney General Edward Bates, and Postmaster General William Dennison— attended Taney's memorial service in Washington, D.C. Only Bates joined the cortège to Frederick, Maryland for Taney's funeral and burial. Taney, whose wife had pre-deceased him by nearly twenty years, was survived by two daughters: the sickly Ellen, and a second, widowed daughter with a small child; he left a small life insurance policy and a bundle of worthless Virginia bonds.

Taney was punished by abolitionists in the Senate after his death. In early 1865, the House of Representatives passed a bill to appropriate funds for a bust of Taney to be displayed in the Supreme Court.^[13] "Now an emancipated country should make a bust to the author of the Dred Scott decision?" exclaimed the indignant Senator Charles Sumner. "If a man has done evil in his life, he must not be complimented in marble." Sumner proposed that a vacant spot, not a bust of Taney, be left in the courtroom "to speak in warning to all who would betray liberty!"^[14]

Death and legacy

Roger B. Taney statue at Mount Vernon Place, Baltimore, Maryland

• Taney was buried at St. John the Evangelist Cemetery in Frederick, Maryland.^[15][16][17]

• His home, Taney Place, located at Adelina, Calvert County, Maryland was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.

Another Taney home is located in Frederick, Maryland where Taney lived and practiced law with partner Francis Scott Key, the author of "The Star Spangled Banner". The [Roger Brooke Taney House] "including the house, detached kitchen, root cellar, smokehouse and slaves quarters, interprets the life of Taney and his wife Anne Key (sister of Francis Scott Key), as well as various aspects of life in early nineteenth century Frederick County."

Taney remained a controversial figure. In 1865, Congress rejected the proposal to commission a bust of Taney to be displayed with those of the four Chief Justices who preceded him. As Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts said:

I speak what cannot be denied when I declare that the opinion of the Chief Justice in the case of Dred Scott was more thoroughly abominable than anything of the kind in the history of courts. Judicial baseness reached its lowest point on that occasion. You have not forgotten that terrible decision where a most unrighteous judgment was sustained by a falsification of history. Of course, the Constitution of the United States and every principle of Liberty was falsified, but historical truth was falsified also. . . .

Sumner had long exhibited a bitter dislike of the late Chief Justice. Upon hearing the news of Taney's passing the previous year, he wrote President Abraham Lincoln in celebration declaring that "Providence has given us a victory" in Taney's death.

Notwithstanding, after Taney's successor, Chief Justice Salmon Chase, died, in 1873 Congress approved funds for busts of both Taney and Chase to be displayed in the Capitol alongside the other chief justices.

Justice Benjamin Robbins Curtis, author of one of the dissents on Dred Scott, held his former colleague in high esteem despite their differences in that case. Writing in his own memoirs, Curtis described Taney:

He was indeed a great magistrate, and a man of singular purity of life and character. That there should have been one mistake in a judicial career so long, so exalted, and so useful is only proof of the imperfection of our nature. The reputation of Chief Justice Taney can afford to have anything known that he ever did and still leave a great fund of honor and praise to illustrate his name. If he had never done anything else that was high, heroic, and important, his noble vindication of the writ of habeas corpus, and of the dignity and authority of his office, against a rash minister of state, who, in the pride of a fancied executive power, came near to the commission of a great crime, will command the admiration and gratitude of every lover of constitutional liberty, so long as our institutions shall endure.

Modern legal scholars have tended to concur with Justice Curtis that, despite the Dred Scott decision, Taney was both an outstanding jurist and a competent judicial administrator. His mixed legacy was noted by Justice Antonin Scalia in his dissenting opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey:

There comes vividly to mind a portrait by Emanuel Leutze that hangs in the Harvard Law School: Roger Brooke Taney, painted in 1859, the 82d year of his life, the 24th of his Chief Justiceship, the second after his opinion in Dred Scott. He is all in black, sitting in a shadowed red armchair, left hand resting upon a pad of paper in his lap, right hand hanging limply, almost lifelessly, beside the inner arm of the chair. He sits facing the viewer, and staring straight out. There seems to be on his face, and in his deep set eyes, an expression of profound sadness and disillusionment. Perhaps he always looked that way, even when dwelling upon the happiest of thoughts. But those of us who know how the lustre of his great Chief Justiceship came to be eclipsed by Dred Scott cannot help believing that he had that case--its already apparent consequences for the Court, and its soon to be played out consequences for the Nation--burning on his mind.

• Taney County, Missouri, is named in his honor, though it is usually pronounced /ˈteɪni/, not /ˈtɔːni/.
• Taneytown, Maryland, located in Carroll County, is named for him.
• A statue of Justice Taney is displayed on the grounds of the Maryland State House.^[18]
• A street in Baltimore City was named for him.^[19]

Chief Justice Taney was the first of the thirteen Catholic justices – out of 112 total – who have served on the Supreme Court.^[20][21]

• The Treasury-class US Coast Guard Cutter Taney was named for him. The ship is now part of the Baltimore Maritime Museum.
• Liberty ship Roger B. Taney also bore his name. After being commissioned on February 9, 1942, on July 2, 1943 she was torpedoed in the South Atlantic. Three crew members died. Many of the crew were involved in an epic 22 day 2,600 mile journey, including surviving a hurricane, and successfully landing in the Bahamas.^[22]
• Roger B. Taney Middle School in Temple Hills, Maryland bore his name. When the population of the county changed to majority black, the school was renamed after Justice Thurgood Marshall.^[23]

See also

American Civil War portal

Demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States Dual federalism List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States List of United States Chief Justices by time in office

List of U.S. Supreme Court Justices by time in office Origins of the American Civil War United States Supreme Court cases during the Taney Court

Notes

Constructs such as ibid., loc. cit. and idem are discouraged by Wikipedia's style guide for footnotes, as they are easily broken. Please improve this article by replacing them with named references (quick guide), or an abbreviated title. (June 2010)

1. ^ Newmyer, R. Kent, The Supreme Court under Marshall and Taney, University of Connecticut (1968), p. 93
2. ^ McNeal, J. (1912). "Roger Brooke Taney", The Catholic Encyclopedia, New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved May 28, 2009 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14442c.htm
3. ^ Ibid. p95
4. ^ Tyler, Samuel, Memoir of Roger Brooke Taney, LLD, p. 35, 1872
5. ^ "Roger Brooke Taney, class of 1795". Dickinson College. http://chronicles.dickinson.edu/encyclo/t/ed_taneyR.htm. Retrieved 2007-10-22. 
6. ^ "Nominations: Chapter 5: Andrew Jackson". United States Senate. http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Nominations.htm#5. Retrieved 2010-04-26. 
7. ^ Alan Brinkley, The Unfinished Nation, 227
8. ^ Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge, http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Charles_River_Bridge_v._Warren_Bridge/Opinion_of_the_Court.
9. ^ ^{a b c} Scott v. Sanford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857)
10. ^ Ariens, Michael, Roger B. Taney.
11. ^ "Presidential Inaugurations: Presidential Oaths of Office". Library of Congress. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/pihtml/pioaths.html. Retrieved 2008-01-06. 
12. ^ Simon, James F. Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney: Slavery, Secession, and the President's War Powers,(Simon and Schuster, 2006), pp. 245-246.
13. ^ Roger B. Taney by Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848 - 1907) Marble, 1876 ca. United States Senate Arts and History.
14. ^ Simon,James,F., Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney,(Simon and Schuster, 2006) p. 268
15. ^ Christensen, George A. (1983) Here Lies the Supreme Court: Gravesites of the Justices, Yearbook Supreme Court Historical Society at Internet Archive.
16. ^ Roger Brooke Taney memorial at Find a Grave.
17. ^ Christensen, George A., Here Lies the Supreme Court: Revisited, Journal of Supreme Court History, Volume 33 Issue 1, Pages 17 - 41 (Feb 19, 2008), University of Alabama.
18. ^ "Roger B. Taney", Maryland State Archives
19. ^ http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=taney+road+baltimore&oq=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=Taney+Rd,+Baltimore,+MD&gl=us&ei=tTCPS9iSO8rf8QbT9bzgDA&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CAoQ8gEwAA
20. ^ Religious affiliation of Supreme Court justices Justice Sherman Minton converted to Catholicism after his retirement. James F. Byrnes was raised as Catholic, but converted to Episcopalianism before his confirmation as a Supreme Court Justice.
21. ^ Boston Globe article about Sotomayor's religion
22. ^ Liberty Ship SS Roger B. Taney.
23. ^ "School May Change Name To Thurgood Marshall". Upper Marlboro, Maryland: Orlando Sentinel. March 2, 1993. http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1993-03-02/news/9303010369_1_thurgood-marshall-first-black-justice-taney. Retrieved November 7, 2011. 

Further reading

• Abraham, Henry J. (1992). Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-506557-3. 
• Cushman, Clare (2001). The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies, 1789–1995 (2nd ed.). (Supreme Court Historical Society, Congressional Quarterly Books). ISBN 1568021267. 
• Flanders, Henry (1874). The Lives and Times of the Chief Justices of the United States Supreme Court. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.. http://books.google.com/books?id=eEQEAAAAYAAJ.  (at Google Books)
• Frank, John P. (1995). Friedman, Leon; Israel, Fred L.. eds. The Justices of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and Major Opinions. Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN 0791013774. 
• Hall, Kermit L., ed (1992). The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195058356. 
• Huebner, Timothy S. (2003). The Taney Court, Justice Rulings and Legacy. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio. ISBN 1576073688. 
•     (2010). "Roger Taney and the Slavery Issue: Looking Beyond—and Before—Dred Scott". Journal of American History 97: 39–62. 
• Lewis, Walker (1965). Without Fear or Favor: A Biography of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 
• Martin, Fenton S.; Goehlert, Robert U. (1990). The U.S. Supreme Court: A Bibliography. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Books. ISBN 0871875543. 
• Simon, James F. (2006). Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney: Slavery, Secession, and the President's War Powers (Paperback ed.). New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0743298462. 
• Urofsky, Melvin I. (1994). The Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical Dictionary. New York: Garland Publishing. pp. 590. ISBN 0815311761. 
• Roger B. Taney at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Roger B. Taney

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Roger B. Taney

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Roger B. Taney

• Biographical data from infoplease.
• Biography from FindLaw.
• Biographical sketch from ushistory.com
• Biographical sketch from Encyclopædia Britannica 1911.
• Fox, John, Capitalism and Conflict, Biographies of the Robes, Roger Taney. Public Broadcasting Service.
• Oyez.org Supreme Court media on Roger B. Taney.
• Roger Brooke Taney Home/Museum in Frederick, MD.
• Taney statue at the Maryland State House in Annapolis.
• Taney bust at the Frederick, Maryland City Hall.
• The Taney Court 1836-1864, History of the Court, Supreme Court Historical Society.

Authority control: LCCN: n50009557 | VIAF: 35525883 | WorldCat

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Preceded by Thomas Kell	Attorney General of Maryland 1827–1831	Succeeded by Josiah Bayly
Preceded by John Berrien	United States Attorney General Served under: Andrew Jackson 1831 – 1833	Succeeded by Benjamin Butler
Preceded by John Marshall	Chief Justice of the Supreme Court 1836–1864	Succeeded by Salmon Chase
Political offices
Preceded by William Duane	United States Secretary of the Treasury Served under: Andrew Jackson 1833–1834	Succeeded by Levi Woodbury

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v d e United States Secretaries of the Treasury Hamilton • Wolcott • Dexter • Gallatin • Campbell • Dallas • Crawford • Rush • Ingham • McLane • Duane • Taney • Woodbury • Ewing • Forward • Spencer • Bibb • Walker • Meredith • Corwin • Guthrie • Cobb • Thomas • Dix • Chase • Fessenden • McCulloch • Boutwell • Richardson • Bristow • Morrill • Sherman • Windom • Folger • Gresham • McCulloch • Manning • Fairchild • Windom • Foster • Carlisle • Gage • Shaw • Cortelyou • MacVeagh • McAdoo • Glass • Houston • Mellon • Mills • Woodin • Morgenthau • Vinson • Snyder • Humphrey • Anderson • Dillon • Fowler • Barr • Kennedy • Connally • Shultz • Simon • Blumenthal • Miller • Regan • Baker • Brady • Bentsen • Rubin • Summers • O'Neill • Snow • Paulson • Geithner

v d e Chief Justices of the United States John Jay • John Rutledge • Oliver Ellsworth • John Marshall • Roger B. Taney • Salmon P. Chase • Morrison Waite • Melville Fuller • Edward Douglass White • William Howard Taft • Charles Evans Hughes • Harlan F. Stone • Fred M. Vinson • Earl Warren • Warren E. Burger • William Rehnquist • John Roberts

v d e Cabinet of President Andrew Jackson (1829–1837) Vice President John C. Calhoun (1829–1832) • None (1832–1833) • Martin Van Buren (1833–1837) Secretary of State Martin Van Buren (1829–1831) • Edward Livingston (1831–1833) • Louis McLane (1833–1834) • John Forsyth (1834–1837) Secretary of the Treasury Samuel D. Ingham (1829–1831) • Louis McLane (1831–1833) • William J. Duane (1833) • Roger B. Taney (1833–1834) • Levi Woodbury (1834–1837) Secretary of War John Eaton (1829–1831) • Lewis Cass (1831–1836) Attorney General John M. Berrien (1829–1831) • Roger B. Taney (1831–1833) • Benjamin F. Butler (1833–1837) Postmaster General William T. Barry (1829–1835) • Amos Kendall (1835–1837) Secretary of the Navy John Branch (1829–1831) • Levi Woodbury (1831–1834) • Mahlon Dickerson (1834–1837)

Supreme Court of the United States

The Taney Court Chief Justice: Roger Brooke Taney (1836–1864) 1836–1837: J. Story | S. Thompson | J. McLean | H. Baldwin | J.M. Wayne | P.P. Barbour 1837–1838: J. Story | S. Thompson | J. McLean | H. Baldwin | J.M. Wayne | P.P. Barbour | J. Catron 1838–1841: J. Story | S. Thompson | J. McLean | H. Baldwin | J.M. Wayne | P.P. Barbour | J. Catron | J. McKinley 1842–1843: J. Story | S. Thompson | J. McLean | H. Baldwin | J.M. Wayne | J. Catron | J. McKinley | P.V. Daniel 1843–1844: J. Story | J. McLean | H. Baldwin | J.M. Wayne | J. Catron | J. McKinley | P.V. Daniel 1845–1846: J. McLean | J.M. Wayne | J. Catron | J. McKinley | P.V. Daniel | S. Nelson | L. Woodbury 1846–1851: J. McLean | J.M. Wayne | J. Catron | J. McKinley | P.V. Daniel | S. Nelson | L. Woodbury | R.C. Grier 1851–1852: J. McLean | J.M. Wayne | J. Catron | J. McKinley | P.V. Daniel | S. Nelson | R.C. Grier | B.R. Curtis 1853–1857: J. McLean | J.M. Wayne | J. Catron | P.V. Daniel | S. Nelson | R.C. Grier | B.R. Curtis | J.A. Campbell 1858–1860: J. McLean | J.M. Wayne | J. Catron | P.V. Daniel | S. Nelson | R.C. Grier | J.A. Campbell | N. Clifford 1860–1861: J. McLean | J.M. Wayne | J. Catron | S. Nelson | R.C. Grier | J.A. Campbell | N. Clifford 1862–1863: J.M. Wayne | J. Catron | S. Nelson | R.C. Grier | N. Clifford | N.H. Swayne | S.F. Miller | D. Davis 1863–1864: J.M. Wayne | J. Catron | S. Nelson | R.C. Grier | N. Clifford | N.H. Swayne | S.F. Miller | D. Davis | S.J. Field

Persondata
Name	Taney, Roger Brooke
Alternative names
Short description	United States federal judge
Date of birth	March 17, 1777
Place of birth	Calvert County, Maryland
Date of death	October 12, 1864
Place of death	Washington, District of Columbia

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