[an amused spectator]

The Supreme Court backed everything President Lincoln did during the war.

The Supreme Court also rendered the Dred Scott decision,before the war.

Could you post a link to the case where the Supremes ruled on the business of the writ after the war?

[WhiskeyPapa]

"if the policy of the Government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation . . . the people will have ceased to be their own rulers. . . ."

You don't like big government, right? Sounds like the author above doesn't much care for it either. Of course it's Abraham Lincoln, in his first inaugural. President Lincoln made the point, and it was reiterated by the attorney general, that each branch of the government interprets the Constitution for itself. This was the view in 1861.

Judgments are only binding on the parties to that suit. If Taney wanted to score points against President Lincoln, all he had to do was get the Merryman/Maryland issue before the whole court; he didn't do that. He knew that the whole court would not take his side.

It's always so funny when the neo-rebs (maybe not you specifically) want to say, "show where the Constitution explicitly forbids secession" but discount me when I say show me where the Constitution explicitly says the president may not suspend the Writ.

Walt