Robert Cooper Grier

Robert Cooper Grier lived from March 5, 1794 to September 25, 1870 and was an American judge who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1846 to 1870. He was a member of the Taney Court and, along with Samuel Nelson, was one of two doughfaces, or Northern Democrats who were anti-abolitionist and supported slavery, on the Court. He concurred with the majority in the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision that the portion of the Missouri Compromise prohibiting slavery north and west of the federal territory was unconstitutional and that Congress had no authority to regulate slavery in the territories, and was pressured by President-elect James Buchanan to join the Southern majority to avoid the appearance that the decision was made along sectional lines. Despite his pro-slavery votes he opposed the secession of the Confederate States, and in 1863 he wrote the majority opinion in the Prize Cases, confirming Abraham Lincolns presidential power to institute Union blockades of Confederate ports during the Civil War.