[WASHINGTONTIMES] House Democrats said Monday they will try to toss the bust of former Chief Justice Roger Taney from the collection in the U.S. Capitol, saying the Maryland jurist’s role in writing the decision in the 1857 Dred Scott ruling makes him unfit for that honor.The bust sits in the old Supreme Court chambers, now preserved for history, on the ground floor of the Capitol.
House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, Maryland Democrat, said he wants to replace it with one of the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first black man to serve on the Supreme Court.
"We’re entering a new era where we are reexamining our history and beginning to look at our history for its good. And also its bad," Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Karen Bass said. "The removal of Chief Justice Taney’s bust is long overdue in our nation’s Capitol."
The Dred Scott decision confirmed that the Constitution did not recognize slaves as U.S. citizens and therefore they could not sue in federal court. It also declared the Missouri Compromise, a deal meant to appease escalating tensions over slavery, unconstitutional, barring Congress from prohibiting slavery in the western territories.