Word: taney
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...legal confrontation. In his opinion, Marshall inveighed against "the baneful influence of . . . narrow construction on all the operations of the government." Despite these heavy wounds, both strict construction and original intent have been summoned up again and again by judicial advocates who have found them useful. Chief Justice Roger Taney, a sometime slaveholder, invoked both when, in 1857, he handed down the decision denying the freedom sought by the slave Dred Scott. Neither slaves nor their descendants, said Taney, were "intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights...
While such a heavy concentration of venerability on one court is unusual, 34 of the 102 Justices have continued past their 75th birthdays, including such luminaries as John Marshall, Roger Taney, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis < Brandeis. John Harlan, who retired in 1971 at the age of 72, became nearly blind at the end of his tenure, but "those last five years made him one of the greatest Justices in history," says Stanford Constitutional Scholar Gerald Gunther. On the other hand, Harlan's longtime colleague and adversary Hugo Black, who did not retire until just before his death...