Roger Brooke Taney’s legacy on the Supreme Court has been dominated by a bit of judicial overreaching that changed the course of history: his opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford, also known as the Dred Scott Case. Taney served as the United States’ fifth chief justice for nearly three decades, for much of that period expanding upon precedents set by his illustrious predecessor, John Marshall. He made important inroads in such areas as federal laws concerning corporations and the application of the Constitution’s commerce clause, skillfully balancing the old demands of federalism with the new emphasis on states’ rights that characterized the age of Andrew Jackson. Although he wrote more, and not insignificant, opinions after Dred Scott, Taney could not outlive the opprobrium that flowed from the decision that declared both that African Americans were not citizens and that the Missouri Compromise—a congressional effort to preserve the balance between slaveholding and non-slaveholding states—was invalid. As the noted Supreme Court historian R. Kent Newmyer has remarked, after Dred Scott, “There was nothing left but the grim logic of marching men” (Newmyer, p. 139).