Sotomayor grew in a very modest South Bronx housing project with a single mother who worked two jobs to give her children the best possible education. Taney grew up in the lap of luxury on a Maryland Tobacco plantation raised by two parents who made their considerable wealth on the backs of enslaved Africans that cultivated tobacco. Most often private tutors educated children in Taney's situation or they attended elite boarding schools. Taney went on to attend Dickinson College, a good school but not Princeton and he did not graduate at the head of his class. Taney would go on to practice law in his own firm. Sotomayor—among other prestigious jobs—worked as an assistant district attorney for the legendary Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau who will be testifying on her behalf during the hearings. Taney later served in the in the Maryland State Senate earning most of his money from his family’s enslaved Africans and the tobacco plantation he inherited; he later freed the slaves. As an U. S. Attorney General (1831-1833) under Jackson, he championed state’s rights as it related to slavery and served as President Jackson’s Secretary of the U. S. Treasury in 1833 assisting the president in a highly politicized dismantling the Federal Banking system. Taney proved so dutiful to Jackson that the president nominated him to the Supreme Court in 1836. In short, Taney’s baggage included profiting off of slave labor and working as the president’s hatched man in destroying the federal bank. Still Jackson nominated him and the senate approved him. Taney went on to serve not just as Supreme Court judge from 1836 to 1864, but he served as Chief Justice of court during his entire tenure there. Most notably we historians credit the start of the Civil War in part to his written ruling in the 1857 Dred Scott case in which he and the other judges on the court sided with public opinion against the African American Scott who took his master to court to sue for his freedom after traveling into a free territory. In his written decision Taney said.
"It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion in regard to that unfortunate race which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and when the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted; but the public history of every European nation displays it in a manner too plain to be mistaken. They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far unfit that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."
Something to think about as we watch the senate hearings unfold this week and hear accusations that Sotomayor is a highly political judge that legislates from the bench and holds ethnic and gender biases. http://www.newsy.com/videos/judging_the_judging_of_sotomayor
For more see:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/law/supreme_court/index.html
http://www.theroot.com/buzz/round-2fight-wrap-sotomayors-second-day
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106602696
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31913987/ns/politics-the_new_york_times/
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