Roger B. Taney.
Melville Fuller.
William Howard Taft.
Unless you’re a serious student of American history, you have probably heard of only one of these three men. And him only because of something outside the context of this comparison.
Someday another name will be added to this list.
John Roberts.
All four men either served or are serving as chief justices of the Supreme Court. If you’ve heard of Taft, it was probably because he was the 27th president of the United States and the only man ever to serve as both president and chief justice.
I’ll be honest. I never had heard of Fuller until I looked him up for this piece. The three men — Taney, Fuller and Taft — were serving as heads of the courts that handed down three of the worst decisions in U.S. history.
Taney stands alone. Dred Scott v Sandford (1858) is almost universally considered the greatest abomination to come from the court, basically ruling that a black man — slave or free — could never be considered an American citizen.
It probably made the Civil War inevitable by declaring the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional and eliminating the right of Congress to block slavery’s expansion into the territories.
Melville Fuller was chief justice in 1895 for Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld segregation laws in Louisiana by enshrining the principle of Separate But Equal. Plessy meant that so-called Jim Crow laws would last for more than half a century until the courts and Congress began changing them.
Taft was on the court in 1927 for Buck v Bell, in which the court upheld Virginia laws allowing involuntary sterilization of the mentally retarded. Taft wasn’t the one who wrote that “three generations of imbeciles is enough,” but that was part of the majority opinion.
Pretty horrible, huh?
The one thing all three cases have in common is that they limited the rights of ordinary people, which is why Roberts will join the list for Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v Wade last week.
Dobbs disingenuously claimed that the question of legalized abortion should be returned to the state and settle on a state-by-state basis. But former vice president Mike Pence, who had one brief moment of courage on Jan. 6, 2021, was quick to say that the next step for the pro-birth crowd was to have Congress ban abortion nationally.
If the Dobbs decision isn’t enough to add Roberts to the list, two other abominations almost certainly would be.
Citizens United v Federal Election Commission (2010) basically removed limitations on how much could be spent on political campaigns, and last week’s ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn v Bruen basically wiped out the ability of states to limit open carry of firearms in public.
Before you say the ruling turns us into the wild wild West, consider this:
Most 19th century frontier towns required visitors to surrender their weapons while inside the town.
America survived Roger B. Taney, Melville Fuller and William Howard Taft, although we needed a Civil War to survive Taney.
I’m not so sure we can survive the Roberts Court.