This program examines the creation of the court and follows it through the brink of the Civil War, focusing on the fourth chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Marshall, and on his successor, Roger Taney. Marshall presided over one of the most famous cases before the court while Taney presided over one of the most infamous. In Marbury v. Madison (1803), Marshall participated in an obscure case involving an unsigned judicial appointment, in which case gave the opportunity to assert the Court's most important power: the right of judicial review. In Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), however, Taney, the next chief justice, exercised that same power against the national government -- to protect slavery. "It was the worst opinion ever written in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States," says James Simon, law professor, dean emeritus, New York Law School. (This DVD contains Dred Scott documents; graphs and maps; manuscripts.) Spanish subtitles.