On Oct.16, Prof. Timothy S. Huebner will deliver a lecture in the courtroom of the Supreme Court of the United States in Washington, D.C., before the Supreme Court Historical Society. Huebner will be introduced by Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, whose grandson Antonin Scalia ’18 attends Rhodes.
The lecture is part of the Society’s Leon Silverman Lecture Series. The theme of this year’s series, “The Supreme Court and the Civil War Revisited,” marks the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War. Huebner’s lecture, “‘The Unjust Judge’: Roger B. Taney, the Slave Power, and the Meaning of Emancipation,” explores the life and death of Taney, the nation’s fifth chief justice, who died in late 1864, seven months before the end of the war. The way in which Taney’s death was interpreted, Huebner contends, tells us a great deal about the meaning of emancipation in 1865.
The Supreme Court Historical Society is a private, not-for-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and dissemination of historical information about the Supreme Court of the United States through educational programs, publications, scholarship, and the acquisition of Court-related antiques and artifacts. Three times a year the Society publishes the Journal of Supreme Court History. Since 2010, Huebner has served as associate editor of the Journal.
Huebner is the Irma O. Sternberg Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History at Rhodes. He is the author of The Taney Court: Justices, Rulings, and Legacy (2003). Among the many courses that he teaches are a two-semester sequence on United States Constitutional History, the Supreme Court in U.S. History, and the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era.
The lecture will air on C-SPAN later this year.
Huebner’s article titled “The Death of Taney” appears in New York Times Opinionator’s Disunion blog. Read it here.
11/10/14 update: The lecture is available to view on the C-SPAN site here.