Supreme Court Appointment and Tenure
While Postmaster General, McLean supported Andrew Jackson, who offered him the posts of Secretary of War and Secretary of the Navy. McLean declined both and was instead appointed to the Supreme Court by Jackson on March 6, 1829, to a seat vacated by Robert Trimble. McLean was confirmed by the United States Senate on March 7, 1829, receiving his commission the same day.
Known as "The Politician on the Supreme Court," he associated himself with every party on the political spectrum, moving from a Jackson Democrat, to the Anti-Jackson Democrats, the Anti-Masonic Party, the Whigs, the Free Soilers, and finally the Republicans. Through the 1830s and 1840s, he was frequently discussed as a potential Whig presidential candidate. President John Tyler offered him the post of Secretary of War, but he declined. Because of his anti-slavery-extension positions, he was considered by the new Republican party as a candidate in 1856. Despite his efforts, the nomination went to John C. Frémont. In 1860, he tried again, winning twelve votes on the first ballot at the Republican convention in Chicago; Abraham Lincoln ultimately was nominated.
In Dred Scott v. Sandford, his strong dissenting views are believed to have forced the hand of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney into a harsher and more polarizing opinion than he originally planned. To the argument that "a colored citizen would not be an agreeable member of society", McLean responded, "This is more a matter of taste than of law." He also wrote the Court's opinion denying there was a common-law copyright in American law in Wheaton v. Peters.
Read more about this topic: John McLean
Famous quotes containing the words supreme, court, appointment and/or tenure:
“Science, unguided by a higher abstract principle, freely hands over its secrets to a vastly developed and commercially inspired technology, and the latter, even less restrained by a supreme culture saving principle, with the means of science creates all the instruments of power demanded from it by the organization of Might.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“The Twist was a guided missile, launched from the ghetto into the very heart of suburbia. The Twist succeeded, as politics, religion, and law could never do, in writing in the heart and soul what the Supreme Court could only write on the books.”
—Eldridge Cleaver (b. 1935)
“In not having an appointment at Harvard, I’m in the company of a great many people whose work I admire tremendously, in particular women of color.”
—Catharine MacKinnon (b. 1946)
“A politician never forgets the precarious nature of elective life. We have never established a practice of tenure in public office.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)