Roger Brooke Taney was the fifth chief justice of the United States, holding that office from 1836 until his death in 1864.
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Roger Brooke Taney was the fifth chief justice of the United States, holding that office from 1836 until his death in 1864.
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Roger Taney was born into a wealthy, slave-owning family in Calvert County, Maryland.
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Roger Taney won election to the Maryland House of Delegates as a member of the Federalist Party but later broke with the party over the War of 1812.
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Roger Taney emerged as one of the most prominent attorneys in the state and was appointed as the Attorney General of Maryland in 1827.
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Roger Taney supported Andrew Jackson's presidential campaigns in 1824 and 1828, and he became a member of Jackson's Democratic Party.
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Roger Taney became one of the most important members of Jackson's cabinet and played a major role in the Bank War.
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In 1835, after Democrats took control of the Senate, Jackson appointed Roger Taney to succeed the late John Marshall on the Supreme Court as Chief Justice.
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Roger Taney was the first of four Democratic appointments to the office of Chief Justice.
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Roger Taney's broad ruling deeply angered many Northerners and strengthened the anti-slavery Republican Party; its nominee Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election.
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Roger Taney strongly disagreed with President Lincoln's broader interpretation of executive power in the American Civil War.
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In Ex parte Merryman, Roger Taney held that the president could not suspend the writ of habeas corpus.
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Roger Taney later tried to hold George Cadwalader, one of Lincoln's generals, in contempt of court and the Lincoln Administration again invoked nonacquiescence in response.
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Roger Taney continues to have a controversial historical reputation, and his Dred Scott ruling is widely considered to be the worst Supreme Court decision ever made.
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At the age of fifteen, Roger Taney was sent to Dickinson College, where he studied ethics, logic, languages, mathematics, and other subjects.
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In 1844, Roger Taney was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society.
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Roger Taney married Anne Phoebe Charlton Key, sister of Francis Scott Key, on January 7,1806.
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Roger Taney rented an apartment during his years of service with the federal government, but he and his wife maintained a permanent home in Baltimore.
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Roger Taney remained a prominent member of the Federalist Party for several years until he broke with the party due to his support of the War of 1812.
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In 1823, Roger Taney moved his legal practice to Baltimore, where he gained widespread notoriety as an effective litigator.
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Roger Taney supported Andrew Jackson in the 1824 presidential election and the 1828 presidential election.
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Roger Taney joined Jackson's Democratic Party and served as a leader of Jackson's 1828 campaign in Maryland.
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Roger Taney freed the slaves that he inherited from his father early in his life, and as long as they lived, he provided monthly pensions to the older ones who were unable to work.
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Roger Taney believed that slavery was a problem to be resolved gradually and chiefly by the states in which it existed.
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Roger Taney claimed that the prosecution lacked a case against Gruber and argued that, lacking evidence of criminal intent, Gruber's freedom of conscience and freedom of speech needed to be protected.
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Roger Taney delivered "an impassioned defense of Gruber" and, in his opening argument, Roger Taney condemned slavery as "a blot on our national character".
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Jackson turned to Roger Taney to fill the vacancy caused by Berrien's resignation, and Roger Taney became the president's top legal adviser.
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In one advisory opinion that he wrote for the president, Roger Taney argued that the protections of the United States Constitution did not apply to free blacks; he would revisit this issue later in his career.
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Roger Taney became an important lieutenant in the "Bank War, " Jackson's clash with the Second Bank of the United States.
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Unlike other members of the cabinet, Roger Taney argued that the national bank was unconstitutional and that Jackson should seek to abolish it.
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Roger Taney redistributed federal deposits from the national bank to favored state-chartered banks, which became known as "pet banks".
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Roger Taney was the first cabinet nominee in the nation's history to be rejected by the Senate.
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Opponents of Roger Taney ensured that his nomination was not voted on before the end of the Senate session, thereby defeating the nomination.
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In July 1835, Jackson nominated Roger Taney to succeed Chief Justice John Marshall, who had died earlier in 1835.
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Many Whigs believed that Roger Taney was a "political hack" and worried about the direction in which he would take the Supreme Court.
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One of Marshall's key allies, Associate Justice Joseph Story, remained on the Court when Roger Taney took office, but Jackson appointees made up a majority of the Court.
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Roger Taney held that, while the Contract Clause prevents state legislatures from violating the express provisions of a contract, the Court would interpret a contract provision narrowly when it conflicted with the general welfare of the state.
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Roger Taney reasoned that any other interpretation would prevent advancements in infrastructure, since the owners of other state charters would demand compensation in return for relinquishing implied monopoly rights.
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The question before the Roger Taney court was whether or not the state statute undercut Congress's authority to regulate commerce; or was it a police measure, as New York claimed, fully within the authority of the state.
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The opinion given by the majority, which Roger Taney was a part of, fit neatly into the Jacksonian economic plan.
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In Prigg v Pennsylvania, the Taney Court agreed to hear a case regarding slavery, slaves, slave owners, and states' rights.
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Roger Taney Court presided over the case of slaves who had taken over the Spanish schooner Amistad.
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Roger Taney held that under this article Congress is able to decide what government is established in each state.
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Roger Taney ruled that the admiralty jurisdiction of the US Courts extends to waters which are actually navigable, without regard to the flow of the ocean tides.
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Roger Taney's narrowly constructed opinion was joined by both pro-slavery and anti-slavery justices on the Court.
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Roger Taney first held that no African-American, free or enslaved, had ever enjoyed the rights of a citizen under the Constitution.
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Roger Taney next declared that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, and that the Constitution did not grant Congress the power to bar slavery in the territories.
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Roger Taney argued that the federal government served as a "trustee" to the people of the territory, and could not deprive the right of slaveowners to take slaves into the territories.
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Many Republicans accused Roger Taney of being part of a conspiracy to legalize slavery throughout the United States.
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Unlike Associate Justice John Archibald Campbell, Roger Taney did not resign from the Court to join the Confederacy, but he believed that the Southern states had the constitutional right to secede and he blamed Lincoln for starting the war.
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From his position on the Court, Roger Taney challenged Lincoln's more expansive view of presidential and federal power during the Civil War.
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Roger Taney did not get the opportunity to rule against the constitutionality of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Legal Tender Act, or the Enrollment Act, but he did preside over two important Civil War cases.
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Roger Taney held that only Congress had the power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, and he ordered the release of Merryman.
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Roger Taney joined a dissenting opinion written by Associate Justice Samuel Nelson, who argued that Lincoln had overstepped his authority by ordering a blockade without the express consent of Congress.
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Roger Taney died on October 12,1864, at the age of 87, the same day his home state of Maryland passed an amendment abolishing slavery.
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Roger Taney had administered the presidential oath of office to seven incoming Presidents.
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Roger Taney's estate consisted of a $10,000 life insurance policy and worthless bonds from the commonwealth of Virginia.
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In early 1865, the House of Representatives passed a bill to appropriate funds for a bust of Chief Justice Roger Taney to be displayed in the Supreme Court alongside those of his four predecessors.
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Roger Taney was indeed a great magistrate, and a man of singular purity of life and character.
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The reputation of Chief Justice Roger Taney can afford to have anything known that he ever did and still leave a great fund of honor and praise to illustrate his name.
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Roger Taney was second only to Marshall in laying the foundation of our constitutional law.
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Roger Taney is all in black, sitting in a shadowed red armchair, left hand resting upon a pad of paper in his lap, right hand hanging limply, almost lifelessly, beside the inner arm of the chair.
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