On the Bench

Taney on the Supreme Court

Twenty-eight years as Chief Justice produced a substantial body of constitutional law that reached well beyond the case for which Taney is now best known.

Succeeding Marshall

When Taney took his seat in 1836 he followed John Marshall, the most influential Chief Justice in the nation's history. Where Marshall had generally favored a strong national government, the early Taney Court is often associated with a greater willingness to recognize the powers and prerogatives of the states — a shift in emphasis reflecting the Jacksonian politics that had elevated Taney. Even so, the change was one of balance rather than wholesale reversal, and the Court continued to build on Marshall-era foundations.

Commerce, contracts, and corporations

Several of Taney's notable opinions shaped nineteenth-century economic life:

• Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge (1837). In one of his first major opinions, Taney held that a corporate charter should be read narrowly and did not imply a monopoly, reasoning that ambiguities should not be resolved against the public interest. The decision is often cited as a milestone in opening the way for economic competition and infrastructure development.
• Commerce and state power. The Taney Court repeatedly grappled with how far states could regulate commerce in the absence of federal action, working toward doctrines that allowed a degree of concurrent state authority.
• Corporate citizenship. Decisions during his tenure helped clarify how corporations could be treated for purposes of access to the federal courts.

Wartime liberties: Ex parte Merryman

Taney's most dramatic confrontation came during the Civil War. In 1861, sitting as a circuit judge in Ex parte Merryman, he challenged President Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, asserting that the power to suspend the writ belonged to Congress rather than the executive. Lincoln declined to follow the ruling, and the episode became a landmark in the long debate over the limits of presidential authority during national emergencies. Whatever one makes of Taney's broader record, his insistence on judicial limits on executive power in wartime is frequently cited by legal scholars to this day.

A career defined — and overshadowed

For roughly the first two decades of his tenure, Taney was widely regarded as an able and respected jurist. That assessment was overturned by the Dred Scott opinion of 1857, which has dominated his reputation ever since. Historians today tend to evaluate his work on two tracks at once: a competent administrator of a complex and evolving body of commercial and constitutional law, and the author of a decision whose moral and political failure is regarded as among the gravest in the Court's history.

Taney remained Chief Justice until his death in 1864, presiding over the Court through the whole of the secession crisis and most of the war. For the larger story of his life, return to the biography.