Salmon Chase, Who?

Showing my utter ignorance of US legal history, I asked a colleague who the namesake of the NKU College of Law was when I first moved to the Buckeye State. "Oh yeah, that guy." Since then I've delved a bit into Salmon Chase's early law practice mostly by way of reading 19th century Cincinnati legal newspaper accounts.

Georgetown Law prof Randy Barnett has uploaded to SSRN his forthcoming Case Western Reserve Law Review article, From Antislavery Lawyer to Chief Justice: The Remarkable But Forgotten Career of Salmon P. Chase. Haven't read it yet but plan to. Here's the abstract:

Salmon P. Chase was as responsible as any single person for the abolition of chattel slavery in the United States. Yet his name is barely known and his career is largely forgotten. In this paper, the author seeks to revive his memory by tracing the arc of his career from antislavery lawyer, to antislavery politician, to Chief Justice of the United States. In addition to explaining why this is a career worth both remembering and honoring, the author offers some possible reasons why his remarkable achievements have largely been forgotten.

[JH]