- In full:
- Roger Brooke Taney
- Born:
- March 17, 1777, Calvert county, Maryland, U.S.
- Died:
- October 12, 1864, Washington, D.C. (aged 87)
- Political Affiliation:
- Democratic Party
- Federalist Party
Roger B. Taney
-
Who was Roger B. Taney?
Roger B. Taney (1777-1864) was the fifth chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, appointed in 1836. He is best known for his majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which stated that slaves were not citizens and could not sue in federal court.
Before becoming chief justice, Taney served as attorney general of Maryland and later as attorney general of the United States under President Andrew Jackson. Taney was also the first Roman Catholic to serve on the Supreme Court. Although a supporter of states' rights and the South, Taney was personally opposed to slavery and had freed his own slaves. He believed slavery should be resolved gradually by individual states.
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What is a chief justice, and what did Roger B. Taney do in this role?
The chief justice is the presiding judge of the Supreme Court of the United States and the highest judicial officer of the nation. The president appoints the chief justice with Senate consent, granting them life tenure. Their duties include presiding over public sessions and private conferences, assigning opinion writing when in the majority, administering oaths to the president and vice president, and chairing the Judicial Conference of the United States.
Roger B. Taney was the fifth chief justice of the Supreme Court. Appointed in 1836, Taney is most remembered for his majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which denied citizenship to slaves and Congress's power to exclude slavery from U.S. territories. Despite the controversy, Taney also upheld federal supremacy in other cases and expanded federal judicial power.
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When did Roger B. Taney serve as chief justice of the United States?
Roger B. Taney served as the fifth chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, remembered mainly for the Dred Scott decision of 1857. President Jackson nominated Taney to the Supreme Court as an associate justice, but his enemies stalled the nomination. Later, after Chief Justice John Marshall died, Taney was nominated to fill his place on the bench. Taney was sworn in as chief justice in March 1836, despite powerful resistance. He remained in this role until his death in October 1864.
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What is Roger B. Taney best known for during his time as chief justice?
Roger B. Taney (1777-1864) served as the fifth chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and is best known for his role in the Dred Scott decision of 1857.
In this majority opinion, Taney argued that enslaved people were not citizens and could not sue in federal court. He further stated that Congress lacked the power to exclude slavery from U.S. territories and that Black people could not become citizens. This decision sparked significant disagreement, intensified national political divisions, and damaged the Supreme Court's reputation.
Despite his controversial stance on slavery, Taney also upheld federal supremacy in cases where state authorities interfered with federal power. His opinion in Ableman v. Booth (1858) affirmed the authority of federal courts against obstruction by state courts.
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What was the Dred Scott decision, and what part did Taney play in it?
The Dred Scott decision was a Supreme Court ruling in 1857 that denied citizenship to slaves and declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional.
Chief Justice Roger B. Taney delivered the majority opinion, stating that slaves were not citizens and could not sue in federal court. He further argued that Congress lacked the power to prohibit slavery in the territories. Taney's decision was widely criticized in the North and is considered one of the worst in Supreme Court history for attempting a judicial solution to a political problem and increasing divisions over slavery.
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How did Roger B. Taney’s rulings impact the United States before the Civil War?
Roger B. Taney's most impactful ruling was the Dred Scott decision of 1857. As Chief Justice, Taney declared that slaves were not citizens and could not sue in federal court. He also stated that Congress could not prohibit slavery in U.S. territories.
The decision intensified national division, with the Southern press praising the ruling as upholding the rights of slaveholders, while the Northern press attacked Taney's legal reasoning. Northern courts and politicians largely rejected the ruling. The Dred Scott decision has been called the Supreme Court's worst decision by constitutional scholars and is seen as a major cause of the Civil War.
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Roger B. Taney (born March 17, 1777, Calvert county, Maryland, U.S.—died October 12, 1864, Washington, D.C.) was the fifth chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, remembered principally for the Dred Scott decision (1857). He was the first Roman Catholic to serve on the Supreme Court.
Early life and career
Taney was the son of Michael and Monica (Brooke) Taney. Of English ancestry, Michael Taney had been educated in France and was a prosperous tobacco grower in Calvert county, Maryland. After graduation from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, in 1795, Taney studied law with Judge Jeremiah Chase, of the Maryland General Court. He was admitted to the bar in 1799 at Annapolis and served one year in the Maryland House of Delegates before settling down in Frederick, Maryland, to practice law. In 1806 he married Anne Key, whose brother, Francis Scott Key, later wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Taney was a member of the conservative, property-conscious Federalist Party until 1812, when the party opposed the war against England. He returned to the Maryland House of Delegates in 1816, when, as a political maverick, he was elected to the state senate. Two years after his term expired in 1821, he moved his family to Baltimore, where he was soon recognized as an excellent lawyer. Juries were impressed with his sense of fair play and his courtesy toward opposing attorneys. In 1827 he was appointed attorney general of Maryland. By this time he had aligned himself with Andrew Jackson, the leader of the Democratic Party, and when Jackson, elected president in 1828, reorganized his Cabinet in 1831, he appointed Taney attorney general of the United States.
Fight against the Bank of the United States. Throughout his tenure in Washington, Taney had been an outspoken leader in the Democrats’ fight against the central bank, the Bank of the United States, which was widely regarded as a tool of Eastern financial interests. Taney believed it had abused its powers, and he strongly advised the president to veto the congressional bill that would renew the bank’s charter and wrote much of the veto message; he also recommended that government funds be withdrawn from the bank and be deposited in a number of state banks.
As a result of his role in the fight over the Bank of the United States, Taney had become a national figure, and in 1833 President Jackson appointed him secretary of the treasury. But opposition to Taney and his financial program was so strong that the Senate rejected him in June 1834, marking the first time that Congress had refused to confirm a presidential nominee for a Cabinet post.
Taney returned to Baltimore to rebuild his law practice. A year later, Jackson nominated him to the Supreme Court of the United States as an associate justice. Taney’s enemies stalled the nomination indefinitely. Then, on July 6, 1835, Chief Justice John Marshall died, and Taney was nominated to fill his place on the bench.
Despite powerful resistance, led by such prominent politicians as Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Daniel Webster, Taney was sworn in as chief justice in March 1836. Although he had inherited the conservative tradition of the Southern aristocracy and had supported states’ rights, the Taney court did not discard John Marshall’s ideas of federal supremacy. Taney believed firmly in divided sovereignty, but he also believed it was the Supreme Court’s role to decide which powers should be shared. Eventually, many of those who had opposed Taney’s appointment came to respect him.
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One of the most important decisions for which the Taney court is noted concerned rights granted by charters. The majority opinion in Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge (1837) declared that rights not specifically conferred could not be inferred from the language of a document. In this decision Taney rejected the claim of a bridge company that the subsequent grant by the state legislature of a charter to another bridge company impaired the legislature’s charter to the first company.
The Dred Scott case
The majority opinion that Taney delivered on March 6, 1857, in Dred Scott v. Sanford is the one for which he is best known. In essence, the decision argued that Scott was a slave and as such was not a citizen and could not sue in a federal court. Taney’s further opinion that Congress had no power to exclude slavery from the territories and that Negroes could not become citizens was bitterly attacked in the Northern press. The Dred Scott decision probably created more disagreement than any other legal opinion in U.S. history; it became a violently divisive issue in national politics and dangerously undermined the prestige of the Supreme Court.
Whenever state authorities threatened or interfered with the execution of federal power, however, Taney upheld federal supremacy. His opinion in Ableman v. Booth (1858), denying state power (in this case the courts of the state of Wisconsin) to obstruct the processes of the federal courts, remains a magnificent statement of constitutional federalism. Under Taney’s leadership federal judicial power was expanded over corporations, the federal government was held to have paramount and exclusive authority over foreign relations, and congressional authority over U.S. property and territory was vigorously upheld. His conflict with President Lincoln over the president’s suspension of a citizen’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus in time of war made him an object of bitter criticism, although, eventually, many jurists came to agree with Taney’s defense of an individual’s constitutional rights.
Taney, a deeply religious Roman Catholic, considered slavery an evil. He had freed the slaves he had inherited before he came to the Supreme Court. It was his belief, however, that slavery was a problem to be resolved gradually and chiefly by the states in which it existed. As an adherent of the South, he could do nothing but watch the defeat of his cause. He died in Washington in October 1864. Even though his thinking ran counter to the dominant historical trends of his time, he had an enduring influence on the substance and evolution of U.S. constitutional law.