Roger Taney

Biography

Roger Brooke Taney was the fifth Chief Justice of the United States, serving from 1836 until his death in 1864. A Maryland native and skilled jurist, Taney authored the controversial Dred Scott decision in 1857, which denied citizenship rights to African Americans and inflamed sectional tensions preceding the Civil War. Despite his legal acumen and earlier antislavery sympathies as a younger man, Taney's legacy remains deeply complicated by his role in perpetuating slavery through constitutional interpretation.