The Marshall and Taney Courts: Continuities
and Changes
Professor Bernstein has recommended the following books
on the Marshall and Taney courts:
Newmyer, R. Kent. The Supreme Court Under Marshall
and Taney, 2nd Ed. Wheeling, Illinois: Harlan Davidson,
2006 (orig. ed., 1968).
Newmyer, R. Kent. John Marshall and the Heroic Age
of the Supreme Court. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 2001.
Hobson Charles F. The Great Chief Justice: John
Marshall and the Rule of Law. Lawrence: University
Press of Kansas, 1996.
Johnson, Herbert A. The Chief Justiceship of John
Marshall, 1801-1835. Columbia: University of South
Carolina Press, 1997.
Smith, Jean Edward. John Marshall: Definer of the
Law. New York: Henry Holt, 1996.
Simon, James F. What Kind of Nation: Thomas Jefferson,
John Marshall, and the Epic Struggle to Create the United
States. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002.
Simon, James F. Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney:
Slavery, Secession, and the President's War Powers.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006.
Fehrenbacher, Don E. The Dred Scott Case. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1978. abridged edition
titled Slavery, Law, and Politics: The Dred Scott
Case in Historical Perspective. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1981.
Frankfurter, Felix. The Commerce Clause Under Marshall,
Taney, and Waite. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1937.
Huebner, Timothy S. The Taney Court: Justices, Rulings,
and Legacy. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO,
2003.
Swisher, Carl Brent. Roger B. Taney. New York:
Macmillan, 1935; reprint, Hamden, CT: Archon Books,
1961.
If you and your students are interested in the first
dozen years of the Court’s history, you should
look at these books:
Casto, William R. The Supreme Court
In The Early Republic: The Chief Justiceships Of John
Jay And Oliver Ellsworth. Columbia, SC: University
of South Carolina Press, 1995.
Gerber, Scott Douglas, ed. Seriatim: The Supreme
Court Before John Marshall. New York: New York
University Press, 1998.
A Fascinating collection of essays examining justices
who served on the Court in its first dozen years. It
dispels the notion that the Court somehow didn’t
matter until Marshall arrived.
Goebel, Julius. Antecedents and beginnings to 1801.
New York: Macmillan, 1971.
Vol. 1 in the History of the Supreme Court (a series
that moved from publisher to publisher over the decades).
Out of print, but well worth looking at.
There is a wide selection of books about Marshall and
his tenure on the Supreme Court. These are just some
of the more recent:
Haskins, George Lee, and Johnson, Herbert A. Foundations
Of Power: John Marshall, 1801-15. New York: Macmillan,
1981.
Johnson, Herbert A. The Chief Justiceship of John
Marshall. Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 1997.
Robarge, David Scott. A Chief Justice's Progress:
John Marshall from Revolutionary Virginia to the Supreme
Court. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000.
Shevory, Thomas C. John Marshall's Law: Interpretation,
Ideology, and Interest. Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1994.
White, G. Edward. The Marshall Court and Cultural
Change: 1815-35. New York: Macmillan, 1988; abridged
edition, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
If you and your students would like to read more widely
in Marshall’s own writings, take a look at this
series:
Charles F. Hobson, et al., Eds. The Papers of John
Marshall. 12 vols. Chapel Hill, NC: University
of North Carolina Press, 1974-2006.
These authors focus their attention on Taney and his
court:
Allen, Austin. Origins Of The Dred Scott Case:
Jacksonian Jurisprudence And The Supreme Court, 1837-1857.
Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006.
Hyman, Harold M., and Wiecek, William M. Equal Justice
under Law: Constitutional Development, 1835-1875.
New York: Harper & Row, 1982.
Siegel, Martin. The Taney Court, 1836-1864.
Millwood, N.Y.: Associated Faculty Press, 1987.
Lewis, H. H. Walker. Without Fear or Favor: A Biography
of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney. Boston, Houghton
Mifflin, 1965.
If you’d like more general background on the
Jackson administration:
Cole, Donald B. The Presidency of Andrew Jackson.
Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas, 1993.
Ellis, Richard E. Andrew Jackson. Washington,
DC: CQ Press, 2003.
Magliocca, Gerard N. Andrew Jackson and the Constitution:
The Rise and Fall of Generational Regimes. Lawrence:
University Press of Kansas, 2007.
Remini, Robert Vincent. Andrew Jackson. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.
Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. The Age of Jackson.
Boston: Little, Brown, 1945. This has been reprinted
many times, and it’s still a lively read.
Wilentz, Sean. Andrew Jackson. New York: Times
Books, 2005.
These books address specific issues that threatened
conflict between Jackson and the Court:
Remini, Robert Vincent. Andrew Jackson And The
Bank War: A Study In The Growth Of Presidential Power.
New York, Norton, 1967
_____. Andrew Jackson & His Indian Wars.
New York: Viking, 2001.
O'Brien, Sean Michael. In Bitterness and in Tears:
Andrew Jackson's Destruction of the Creeks And Seminoles.
Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003.
Wallace, Anthony F. C. The Long, Bitter Trail: Andrew
Jackson and the Indians. New York: Hill and Wang,
1993.
These biographies study two other leading legal and
judicial figures in Taney’s era:
Newmyer, R. Kent. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story:
Statesman of the Old Republic. Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 1985.
Remini, Robert Vincent. Daniel Webster: The Man
and his Time. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997.
These are only a few of the books that study the Taney
court’s most famous decision:
Campbell, Stanley W. The Slave Catchers: Enforcement
of the Fugitive Slave Law, 1850-1860. Chapel Hill,
University of North Carolina Press, 1970. A good introduction
to the statute that underlay Scott’s case.
_____. with Ward McAfee. The Slaveholding Republic:
An Account of the United States Government’s Relations
to Slavery. New York: Oxford University Press,
2001. McAfee, a former student of Fehrenbacher’s,
completed the unfinished manuscript of this book after
Fehrenbacher’s death.
Finkelman. Dred Scott V. Sandford: A Brief History
With Documents. Boston: Bedford Books, c1997. Useful
classroom text.
Graber, Mark A. Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional
Evil. Cambridge: New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2006.
Kaufman, Kenneth C. Dred Scott's Advocate: A Biography
of Roswell M. Field. Columbia: University of Missouri
Press, 1996.
McGinty, Brian. Lincoln and the Court. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.
Maltz, Earl M. Dred Scott and the Politics of Slavery.
Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas, 2007.
Online, you will, of course, find opinions for all
of the cases mentioned in this essay on Findlaw and
Oyez. The SCHS’s “Landmark Cases”
section pays special attention to the Marbury, McCullough,
and Dred Scott cases.
http://www.landmarkcases.org/
