Spencer Roane

Who was Spencer Roane?

Spencer Roane was a Virginia lawyer and politician who served in the Virginia House of Delegates and as a judge of the state's highest court.

Roane was born in Essex County, Virginia, on April 4, 1762. His father was William Roane, a Scotsman's son who had emigrated from Ireland in 1741 and served in the House of Burgesses before the American Revolutionary War.

Spencer Roane attended private schools and entered the College of William and Mary about 1777. In 1780, Roane studied law under Chancellor George Wythe, and later for a year in Philadelphia. At age 22, Roane was appointed to the Virginia Council of State, and continued his legal career. His father, William Roane, died in 1788.

In 1789, fellow legislators appointed the 27 year old Spencer Roane a judge of the General Court, where he continued until 1794. He resigned in order to accept appointment as a judge of the Court of Appeals. Roane sold Mahockney Plantation and moved to Richmond. Roane remained an influential judge on that high court until his death on September 4, 1822.

Roane gained a reputation as an advocate of States' Rights, and an opponent of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, whom President John Adams chose for that post shortly before President Thomas Jefferson, who was rumored to favor Roane for the position, took office. In 1815, Roane defied the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, which he feared marked a drift toward abolition of slavery. In 1819, Roane editorialized against Marshall and the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in McCulloch v. Maryland. When in 1820, Marshall wrote for his court in Cohens v. Virginia, Roane criticized the decision as the "zenith of despotic power" and "negatives the idea that the states have a real existence."