The Story of Roger B. Taney
Roger B. Taney was born in 1777 in Calvert County, Maryland, of a wealthy slave-owning family. He was admitted to the bar in
1799 and practiced law for over 20 years in Frederick, Maryland. In 1831 President Andrew Jackson tapped him to become
Attorney General to assist in the struggle with the Bank of the United States. In 1883, Congress passed legislation to recharter
the Bank of the United States and Taney wrote much of the message vetoing the bill.
Jackson then named Taney as Secretary of the Treasury so funds could be withdrawn from the bank. In 1836 Jackson appointed
Taney Chief Justice of the United States. Taney remained in this position until his death in 1864. During his tenure on the
Supreme Court, he helped lay down the foundations of modern jurisprudence and pave the way for twentieth-century banking and
contract law.
However, his opinions were not without controversy. When President Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus during the
American Civil War, Justice Taney declared this order unconstitutional. The Dred Scott decision, which he authored in 1857, is
regarded as one of the worst rulings ever made in the history of the Supreme Court. The decision is often blamed for inflaming
the political divide over slavery and contributing to the start of the Civil War. If it had not been for his written opinion in the Dred
Scott v. Sanford case, Taney might have gone down in history as one of the ablest judges to serve our country.
Dred Scott was a slave who was taken into free territory by his master and then returned home to Missouri. He decided to sue in
federal court stating that he was a free man because he had lived for a time in a free territory. Under Missouri’s state law Scott
was entitled to his freedom and the lower court gave it to him. However, Missouri’s top court reversed this decision so Scott
appealed to the US Supreme Court.
The question Taney considered was whether a Negro “whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, can
become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as
such become entitled to all the rights, privileges and immunities guaranteed by that instrument to the citizen”.
In his ruling ----Taney upheld the finding of Missouri’s highest court. He denied Dred Scott his freedom, declaring him not a
citizen of the United States. In the infamous decision, Taney wrote that Negroes were “beings of an inferior order and altogether
unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so unfit that they had no rights which the white man
was bound to respect.”
Rather than unite the nation, Taney’s written opinion gave legitimacy to more than a century of prejudice and segregation
following the Civil War. America still copes today with the legacy of prejudice that the Dred Scott decision enshrined into law.
“But we think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous... and we shall do what we can to have it [the Court] to over-rule this. I have
said, in substance, that the Dred Scott decision was, in part, based on assumed historical facts which were not really true…”
Abraham Lincoln’s Speech on the Dred Scott Decision, 1857
“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..."
Charles Sumner, U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, 1865
As a man, an American, a citizen, a colored man of both Anglo-Saxon and African descent, I denounce this representation as a
most scandalous and devilish perversion of the Constitution, and a brazen misstatement of the facts of history.
Frederick Douglas, 1857
…Taney’s decision was “not very good”… “even worse than I thought.”
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer, 2007
“Besides being racist and morally bankrupt, the Dred Scott decision also reflected the arrogance of judges like Taney, who tried
to elevate themselves over the U.S. Constitution.”
Whitewater prosecutor and Dean of Pepperdine Law School, Kenneth W. Starr, 2007
“…most disastrous opinion in Supreme Court history … the most egregious example of judicial activism in our history . . . in
which the court went far beyond what was necessary to decide the case.”
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, 2007
Stay tuned for more to come on this topic.
Roger B. Taney was born in 1777 in Calvert County, Maryland, of a wealthy slave-owning family. He was admitted to the bar in
1799 and practiced law for over 20 years in Frederick, Maryland. In 1831 President Andrew Jackson tapped him to become
Attorney General to assist in the struggle with the Bank of the United States. In 1883, Congress passed legislation to recharter
the Bank of the United States and Taney wrote much of the message vetoing the bill.
Jackson then named Taney as Secretary of the Treasury so funds could be withdrawn from the bank. In 1836 Jackson appointed
Taney Chief Justice of the United States. Taney remained in this position until his death in 1864. During his tenure on the
Supreme Court, he helped lay down the foundations of modern jurisprudence and pave the way for twentieth-century banking and
contract law.
However, his opinions were not without controversy. When President Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus during the
American Civil War, Justice Taney declared this order unconstitutional. The Dred Scott decision, which he authored in 1857, is
regarded as one of the worst rulings ever made in the history of the Supreme Court. The decision is often blamed for inflaming
the political divide over slavery and contributing to the start of the Civil War. If it had not been for his written opinion in the Dred
Scott v. Sanford case, Taney might have gone down in history as one of the ablest judges to serve our country.
Dred Scott was a slave who was taken into free territory by his master and then returned home to Missouri. He decided to sue in
federal court stating that he was a free man because he had lived for a time in a free territory. Under Missouri’s state law Scott
was entitled to his freedom and the lower court gave it to him. However, Missouri’s top court reversed this decision so Scott
appealed to the US Supreme Court.
The question Taney considered was whether a Negro “whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, can
become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as
such become entitled to all the rights, privileges and immunities guaranteed by that instrument to the citizen”.
In his ruling ----Taney upheld the finding of Missouri’s highest court. He denied Dred Scott his freedom, declaring him not a
citizen of the United States. In the infamous decision, Taney wrote that Negroes were “beings of an inferior order and altogether
unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so unfit that they had no rights which the white man
was bound to respect.”
Rather than unite the nation, Taney’s written opinion gave legitimacy to more than a century of prejudice and segregation
following the Civil War. America still copes today with the legacy of prejudice that the Dred Scott decision enshrined into law.
“But we think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous... and we shall do what we can to have it [the Court] to over-rule this. I have
said, in substance, that the Dred Scott decision was, in part, based on assumed historical facts which were not really true…”
Abraham Lincoln’s Speech on the Dred Scott Decision, 1857
“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..."
Charles Sumner, U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, 1865
As a man, an American, a citizen, a colored man of both Anglo-Saxon and African descent, I denounce this representation as a
most scandalous and devilish perversion of the Constitution, and a brazen misstatement of the facts of history.
Frederick Douglas, 1857
…Taney’s decision was “not very good”… “even worse than I thought.”
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer, 2007
“Besides being racist and morally bankrupt, the Dred Scott decision also reflected the arrogance of judges like Taney, who tried
to elevate themselves over the U.S. Constitution.”
Whitewater prosecutor and Dean of Pepperdine Law School, Kenneth W. Starr, 2007
“…most disastrous opinion in Supreme Court history … the most egregious example of judicial activism in our history . . . in
which the court went far beyond what was necessary to decide the case.”
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, 2007
Stay tuned for more to come on this topic.
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