Word: taney
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...struggled to hold the nation together, President Lincoln introduced preventive detention and military justice for thousands who opposed the war, including hundreds arrested in the bloody Draft Riots in New York City and elsewhere. This amounted to an imposition of martial law. In a landmark judgment, Chief Justice Roger Taney threw out the case of one John Merryman, a Southern sympathizer who had been convicted of treason by a military court. Merryman appealed to Justice Taney, who found that Lincoln had sought to suspend habeas corpus when it was "perfectly clear under the Constitution that he had no such power...
Clark finds support for his view in The Jewels of the Princess of Orange, an advisory opinion written in 1831 by Attorney General Roger Taney, who later became Chief Justice. That ruling involved President Andrew Jackson, who wanted a reluctant U.S. District Attorney to put an end to a case involving the princess's stolen jewels, which had been seized by U.S. customs officials; for diplomatic reasons, Jackson wanted to help the princess get the jewels back quickly. If the district attorney refused to drop the case, wrote Taney, "the prosecution, while he remained in office, would still...