Issues with statues of Roger Taney

WJLA reported:


The Robert E. Lee and "Stonewall" Jackson statue in Wyman Park, the Roger B. Taney statue in Mount Vernon, the Confederate Women’s Monument in Bishop Park and the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument on Mount Royal Avenue were all removed between 12:00 a.m. and 3:30 a.m. Wednesday morning. [16 August 2017]



On 17 August 2017, the Washington Post stated:


Maryland Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) on Thursday [17 Aug 17] lashed out at Gov. Larry Hogan (R) for quickly advancing plans this week to remove a controversial State House statue of former U.S. Supreme Court justice Roger B. Taney, who defended slavery in the landmark 1857 Dred Scott decision.

In a letter to the governor, Miller defended Taney’s legacy and said the memorial should stay put to help educate people about the past. He also criticized Hogan for pushing a vote on the matter “outside the public eye.”


link to WaPo: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/md-senate-president-slams-hogan-for-fast-vote-to-remove-taney-statue/2017/08/17/41833b12-8390-11e7-ab27-1a21a8e006ab_story.html?utm_term=.e26cdbdc081b

Of interest to patent people, Taney was in the dissenting four in Winans v. Denmead, 56 U.S. 15, with Curtis (a dissenter in Dred Scott) writing the majority opinion in Winans. Of the dissent in Winan:


The plaintiff confines his claim to the use of the conical form, and excludes from his specification any allusion to any other. He must have done so advisedly. He might have been unwilling to expose the validity of his patent, by the assertion of a right to any other. Can he abandon the ground of his patent, and ask now, for the exclusive use of all cars which, by experiment, shall be found to yield the advantages which he anticipated for conical cars only?

The claim of today is that an octagonal car is an infringement of this patent. Will this be the limit to that claim? Who can tell the bounds within which the mechanical industry of the country may freely exert itself? What restraints does this patent impose in this branch of mechanic art?



The dissent in Winans comprised MR. CHIEF JUSTICE TANEY, MR. JUSTICE CATRON, MR. JUSTICE DANIEL, and MR. JUSTICE CAMPBELL, .

Curtis was so disgusted with Dred Scott that he resigned from the Supreme Court.

Of the dissent in Dred Scott, from wikipedia:


Justice Benjamin Robbins Curtis, in dissent, attacked much of the Court's decision as obiter dicta, on the ground that once the Court determined that it did not have jurisdiction to hear Scott's case, it must simply dismiss the action, and not pass judgment on the merits of the claims. The dissents by Curtis and McLean also attacked the Court's overturning of the Missouri Compromise on its merits, noting both that it was not necessary to decide the question, and also that none of the authors of the Constitution had ever objected on constitutional grounds to the United States Congress' adoption of the antislavery provisions of the Northwest Ordinance passed by the Continental Congress, or the subsequent acts that barred slavery north of 36°30' N.