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1. Realizing Popular Sovereignty: Partisan Sentiment and Constitutional Constraint in Jacksonian Jurisprudence
- University of Georgia Press
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chapter one Realizing Popular Sovereignty Partisan Sentiment and Constitutional Constraint in Jacksonian Jurisprudence over the previous two decades, complained the Southern Quarterly Review in 1850, the Supreme Court of the United States had suffered a “great and lasting change of the confidence, respect and veneration ” it had once held among the public. “We have no doubt, the decay is . . . a necessary consequence of that great era and change in public sentiment of which General Jackson was the Great Pioneer.” President Andrew Jackson and his successor, Martin Van Buren, the Review charged, made a position on the court “the reward of political jobbing,” with “partisan zeal, and skill in political strategy” counting more “than long professional labour, experience , and study.”1 Although it overstated its case, the Review underscored the way in which the appointments by Democratic presidents had shaped the court. Jackson’s appointees held a majority of the court’s seven seats by 1837, and Van Buren had appointed other like-minded men when the number of seats expanded to nine. Under the leadership of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, these justices rejected the nationalist and elitist orientation that characterized the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence under Taney’s predecessor, John Marshall. Marshall and his associates had worked within the constraints established by the Constitution and Congress to restrain state legislatures from committing acts that the justices considered irresponsible or immoral. Taney and his associates shifted the court’s jurisprudence toward an antielitist, amoral conception of judicial authority that sought to maximize legislative power. The justices strove to make their court a facilitator of self-rule that would help transform popular sovereignty from a theoretical abstraction to a believable , albeit decidedly fictional and exclusionary, description of the social order. With a few exceptions, this stance bore a strong relationship to a 13 14 beneath dred scott 1 majority of justices’ identification with the mainstream of the Democratic Party in the 1830s and 1840s. Partisan identity continually impinged on their legal reasoning. Yet justices’ understanding of the duties of their office and their court’s role within the Union mediated their politics. Members believed themselves bound to interpret the Constitution within the constraints limned out by Congress and their predecessors on the Supreme Court. Although three members consistently voiced their opposition to the Taney Court’s jurisprudence, a majority of members serving between 1836 and 1861 pursued an agenda infused with Democratic sensibility but constrained by their perception of constitutional boundaries. A strong partisan orientation characterized the Taney Court. Twelve of the fifteen justices serving between 1836 and 1861 supported the Democrats before coming to the court, and most continued, in one capacity or another, to do so thereafter. Justice Peter V. Daniel of Virginia illustrated the depth of this sentiment when he proudly reported to his daughter that he and Justice James M. Wayne of Georgia had attended a dinner party where no Whigs were present.2 Such sentiments appeared in public as well. Currents of partisan ideology ran through Taney Court discourse, and justices selfconsciously used their positions to further the perceived interest of middling white males against predatory elites and potentially competitive, largely dark-skinned, social subordinates. The court’s rulings in commercial and corporate law as well as its decisions concerning slavery and race revealed that tendency clearly enough, but the justices’ politics shaped their perception of duty and continually infused their decision making. Court members rejected contentions that social order required elite guidance and disciplined development imposed from above and refused to allow their institution to take on such responsibilities. Rather, the Taney Court developed an antielitist, fundamentally amoral conception of judicial authority that took deference to popular will as its foundation and both furthered the court’s larger agenda and supported, not always consciously, the disparities of racial and class power within the Union. Taney Court members, especially those appointed by Jackson and Van Buren, loyally served the Democratic Party in the critical period of its formation . Seven of the eight men elevated to the court by these two presidents actively campaigned for Jackson in 1828 against John Quincy Adams and his proposals for a nationally guided program of internal improvements. These seven men also supported Van Buren in his maneuvers to become Jackson’s [34.204.177.148] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 16:40 GMT) realizing popular sovereignty 15 1 dominant adviser and eventual successor. Each of the seven, with varying degrees of commitment, participated in the political struggles of the 1830s that...