McLean, John (b. Morris County, N.J., 11 Mar. 1785; d. Cincinnati, Ohio, 4 Apr. 1861; interred Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati), associate justice, 1830–1861. The son of Ulsterman Fergus McLean (originally McLain) and Sophia Blackford, McLean grew up in a succession of frontier communities before settling in Warren County, Ohio, in 1797. Despite highly irregular schooling, he studied law with John S. Gano and Arthur St. Clair in Cincinnati in 1804. He established a Democratic newspaper at Lebanon, Ohio, after admission to the bar, and by 1811 was examiner in the United States Land Office in Cincinnati.
Elected as a War Hawk to the United States House of Representatives in 1812 and reelected in 1814, he actively promoted the presidential candidacy of James Monroe. He returned to Ohio and served on the state supreme court until 1822 when President Monroe appointed him commissioner of the General Land Office. Made postmaster general in 1823, he oversaw a tremendous expansion in westward routes and the elevation of the office to cabinet status. McLean remained in office under President John Quincy
Adams.
Although an early supporter of John C. Calhoun, he adroitly courted Andrew
Jackson but kept Adams from finding grounds to dismiss him. After Jackson's victory in 1828, McLean's reward was appointment to the Supreme Court.
Known as the “Politician on the Supreme Court” during his thirty‐year coquettish quest for the presidency, McLean flirted successively with Jackson Democrats, anti‐Jackson Democrats, Antimasons, Whigs, Free Soilers, and Republicans (see
Extrajudicial Activities). McLean saw nothing injudicious in his quest, or as a devout Methodist, any conflict between politics and religion. He did not participate in
Smith v. Swormstedt (1853), occasioned by the sectional division of the Methodist church, but agreed that Stephen Girard lawfully could ban clergy from his academy (
Vidal etal v. Philadelphia, 1844).
McLean began his judicial career as a nationalist, concurring with Marshall in
Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) and
Worcester v. Georgia (1832) (see
Cherokee Cases). He favored state banking, dissented in
Craig v. Missouri (1830) and convinced the court that state bank notes were not bills of credit in *
Briscoe v. Commonwealth Bank of Kentucky (1837). Another states' rights opinion was
Ex parte Dorr (1845), where the court refused a writ of habeas corpus for the captured leader of Rhode Island's Dorr Rebellion. McLean wanted to be chief justice, but his pro‐Indian decisions and opposition to Peggy Eaton severed his friendly relations with Jackson.
States' rights commercial issues bothered McLean. He supported the rulings of
New York v. Miln (1837), the
License Cases (1847), and the
Passenger Cases (1849), but he rejected the doctrine of “selective exclusiveness” announced in *
Cooley v. Board of Wardens (1852). His claim for exclusive federal authority led Justice Curtis to label Justices McLean and Wayne “the most high‐toned federalists on the bench.” Federalism marked McLean's decision in
Piqua Branch of State Bank of Ohio v. Knoop (1854), where he protected a bank charter from state modification. But McLean disallowed claims for a federal common law of
copyright in
Wheaton v. Peters (1834).
McLean declined President John
Tyler's offer to become of secretary of war, and began looking first to the Whigs and then the Free Soilers. His abhorrence of
slavery was deeply rooted, and in an 1848 open letter he proclaimed that slavery existed only where established by law. He was outvoted in
Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842), where the Court permitted the kidnapping from a free state of an alleged runaway, but he rejected the claim of attorney William H. Seward in
Jones v. Van Zandt (1847) that a
“higher law” permitted a man to harbor fugitive slaves.
McLean has been blamed, perhaps unfairly, for precipitating the Dred Scott decision (see
Scott v. Sandford, 1857). After Justices McLean and Benjamin R.
Curtis announced plans to file dissents to Justice Samuel
Nelson's initial hands‐off decision, the majority changed its mind and agreed to tackle the controverted issues. McLean's dissent read well, although in research and argument Justice Curtis's had the edge.
The case made McLean a possible presidential contender despite his advancing age. His name was mentioned in 1860 at the Constitutional Union convention, and he received twelve votes on the first ballot at the Republican convention. In early 1861 his health failed, and he died in Cincinnati on 4 April 1861.
McLean's persistent quest for the presidency prejudiced both contemporary and historical opinion against him. In 1848 Senator Henry S. Foote charged McLean violated
judicial ethics, but there is little to suggest that partisan considerations influenced McLean's decisions. Forcing Chief Justice Roger B.
Taney to commit the court's worst “self‐inflicted wound” may have been his greatest contribution to American history.
Bibliography
Don E. Fehrenbacher , The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics (1978).
Frank Otto Gatel , John McLean, in The Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 1789–1969, edited by Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel, vol. 1 (1969), pp. 535–570.
Michael B. Dougan
