(tô´n) (KEY) , 1777–1864, American jurist, fifth Chief Justice
of the United States (1836–64), b. Calvert co.,
Md., grad. Dickinson College, 1795.
Early Life
Taney was born of a wealthy slave-owning family of tobacco
farmers. He was admitted to the bar in 1799 and
as a Federalist served (1799–1800) one term in the Maryland
house of delegates. He temporarily broke with
the Federalist leadership over the party’s opposition
to the War of 1812, but he gained control of the
Federalists in Maryland and in 1816 was elected to a five-year
term in the state senate. Having built up a
large practice, he moved (1823) from Frederick to Baltimore.
In 1824 he permanently abandoned the Federalists to support
Andrew Jackson. President Jackson appointed
(1831) Taney to the post of Attorney General to assist
in the struggle with the Bank of the United States.
Taney wrote much of Jackson’s message vetoing (1832) the
act that rechartered the bank, and, when Louis
McLane and William J. Duane refused to withdraw federal
funds from the bank, Taney was appointed (1833)
Secretary of the Treasury and effected the withdrawal.
Chief Justice
The Senate, incensed by Taney’s actions as Secretary of
the Treasury, refused in 1835 to ratify his
nomination as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court,
but the following year, somewhat changed in
membership, the Senate ratified his appointment as Chief
Justice. In the Charles River Bridge Case (1837)
Taney declared that a state charter of a private business
conferred only privileges expressly granted and that
any ambiguity must be decided in favor of the state. His
opinion outraged conservatives, who were opposed
to any modification of the view that charters issued by
states are inviolable, a view established by Taney’s
predecessor, John Marshall, in the Dartmouth College Case
(1819).
Taney felt that the police power of a state entitled it
to make reasonable regulatory laws even if they
appeared to override provisions of the U.S. Constitution;
thus, he held that, although Congress alone had
the power to regulate interstate commerce, a state might
exclude a corporation organized elsewhere. In
sustaining fugitive slave laws, however, Taney denied
to free states the power of refusing obedience to
federal statutes requiring the surrender of escaped slaves.
Taney’s support of the slavery laws was most clearly expressed
in the Dred Scott Case (1857). Here he held
that slaves (and even the free descendants of slaves)
were not citizens and might not sue in the federal
courts, and that Congress could not forbid slavery in
the territories of the United States. Opposition to the
second holding was furiously expressed by the Republicans,
and when Lincoln became President he
considered Taney an arch foe. In the Civil War, Taney
in vain ruled against Lincoln’s suspension of the writ
of habeas corpus (see Merryman, ex parte). There was much
antipathy to Taney at his death, but there has
been a gradual increase in appreciation of his contributions
to constitutional law.
Bibliography
See biographies by B. C. Steiner (1922, repr. 1970), C.
B. Swisher (1935, repr. 1961), and W. Lewis (1965); R. K.
Newmyer, The Supreme Court under Marshall and Taney (1969).