Taney, Roger B(rooke)

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.

Roger B. Taney, photograph by Mathew Brady.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

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