Justice John McLean
Today’s Justice of the Day is: JOHN McLEAN. Justice McLean took the Judicial Oath to officially join the Supreme Court of the United States on this day, January 11, in 1830.
Justice McLean was born on March 11, 1785 in Morris County, New Jersey, but grew up as a farmer’s son near Lebanon, Ohio, the state from which he would be appointed to the SCUS.
From 1807 to 1812, Justice McLean was the Founder and Editor of The Western Star, which continued publication into the 21st century and was once Ohio’s longest-running weekly newspaper (until its closure in 2013), and worked in private practice in his home town of Lebanon; during the final year of this time in his life, he also became an Examiner with the United States Congressional Land Office in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1813, he began a three year stint in the United States House of Representatives, after which he served as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio until 1822. Justice McLean then briefly was Commissioner of the United States Land Office (from 1822 to 1823), before becoming Postmaster General of the United States, an office he would hold until his appointment to the SCUS.
Justice McLean was nominated by President Andrew Jackson on March 6, 1829, to a seat vacated by Justice Robert Trimble. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on March 7, and received his commission that day. Justice McLean served on the Marshall and Taney Courts, and his service was terminated on April 4, 1861, due to his death.
Despite his deep, long-standing loyalty to the Democratic Party, Justice McLean proved willing to vote against the interests of the slave-owners who held enormous sway over it when he became one of only two Members of the SCUS (the other being Justice Benjamin Robbins Curtis) to dissent from Chief Justice Roger Taney’s odious opinion of the Court in Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857) (which attempted to answer the slavery question by ruling completely in the slave-owning states’ favor). His vote in that case was likely the most important of his tenure, as he did not play an especially large role in resolving any other issue and is not particularly well-remembered today.