John Roberts: Worse than Roger Taney

That’s the case Harold Meyerson makes:

Taney, the chief justice who ruled against Lincoln in the habeas corpus case, is remembered today as the author of the Dred Scott decision, which declared that Blacks could never be citizens of the United States. That decision also struck down the territorial compromises that had enabled Northern states to ban slavery. His reputation in the eyes of history is that of a jurist whose extreme racism was a proximate cause of the Civil War.

In comparing Taney’s ruling in the habeas corpus case (ex parte Merryman) to the Roberts ruling in the Trump immunity case, however, Taney has by far the better of the arguments. Both chief justices completely ignored the violent threats to the nation’s fundamental constitutional order in their rulings, but Taney did so in the name of a basic human right, while Roberts did so in the name of presidential immunity, which appears nowhere in our Bill of Rights or anyplace else in the Constitution.

In fact, Roberts fully neglects Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution, which says that a president who suffers impeachment and removal from office for high crimes and misdemeanors “shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.” Thanks to Roberts and his gang, this is no longer applicable to those presidents who commit high crimes and misdemeanors as part of their official acts.

Dismissing a very real threat to the nation, Taney upheld a usually inviolable right; also dismissing a very real threat to the nation, Roberts invented one.

Ranking Chief Justices is a very depressing exercise, let me tell you what.