Taney, Roger B.

Taney, Roger B. (1777–1864), chief justice of the United States from 1836 until his death.Taney's reputation has never recovered from the catastrophe of his majority opinion in the Scott v. Sandford (Dred Scott) case of 1857. He blighted his considerable accomplishments by his dedication to slavery, but he made lasting and significant contributions to the law of corporations, federal jurisdiction, and state regulatory power.

Born on a tobacco plantation in southern Maryland and educated at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, Taney was admitted to the Maryland bar in 1799. He served in the state legislature, became a Jacksonian Democrat, and was attorney general of the United States (1831–1833) and secretary of the treasury (1833–1834) in Andrew Jackson's cabinet.

Taney's most important opinions include Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge (1837), which refused to read an implied grant of monopoly privileges into a corporate charter; Propeller Genesee Chief v. Fitzhugh (1851), extending federal admiralty jurisdiction to inland navigable waters; and Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842), a concurrence in which he insisted on complete and exclusive state regulatory authority over all aspects of slavery.

In the Dred Scott ruling, Taney held that no black American descended from slaves could ever be a citizen of the United States and that Congress lacked constitutional power to exclude slavery from the territories. In thus attempting to impose an undemocratic judicial solution on a grave political and moral issue, Taney both degraded the role of the Supreme Court and besmirched his positive contributions to American public law.
See also Antebellum Era; Civil War: Causes; Democratic Party; Economic Regulation.

Bibliography

Carl B. Swisher , The Taney Period, 1835–64, 1974.

William M. Wiecek