Today in Supreme Court History: March 6, 1857

3/6/1857: Dred Scott v. Sandford decided.

Comments

[SMP0328]

It destroyed the Court's reputation for a generation.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

My limited understanding of it is that the decision said because Africans are sub-human, they can never have Constitutional rights. It was not a legal decision at all, just a policy decision which should have been left to Congress.

[SMP0328]

It was a legal decision based on Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's desire to set a very pro-slavery policy for the nation. Ultimately, it almost destroyed the nation and ended up setting the ultimate anti-slavery policy (abolition).

[Stupid Government Tricks]

I know the results, and I know it was by a legal court. I meant it was not based on laws or the constitution or any legal interpretation of them, but based on the personal faux-scientific idea that Africans were not human. You did not address that point.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

There are multiple books about the case, including one that focuses on his wife. I still find Don Fehrenbacher's book the seminal source, though perhaps some recent works challenge certain conclusions.

Some people use Taney's opinion (which a majority of the Court accepted as the Court's holding) as a leading sign of the problems with originalism. It is an example of the flexibility of originalist appeals. Both the majority and dissenting opinions referenced history. Taney can be cited as "bad originalism."

Abraham Lincoln, in his Cooper Union Address, which significantly helped him obtain the presidential nomination, had an extended historical analysis of how Congress interfered with slavery in the territories from the founding period. Harold Holtzer wrote a good book on his speech. Sam Waterson gave a good reenactment of it.

Lincoln noted that when the Constitution speaks about black people or slaves, it uses the word "person." The dissents refute the majority opinion (and multiple concurrences) on black citizenship.

The narrow (if for the Scotts, including their two children, rather important) question involved in the case raised conflict of the law questions. The Scotts might have been freed while on "free territory," but were they free once they returned to a slave state?*

[The Taney Court repeatedly held against freedom, even if the law was flexible enough not to do so. See, Justice Accused.]

Ultimately, the justices (pushed by the national political community) wanted to answer a larger question. They did so badly.

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Note: Don Fehrenbacher argues that even the concurring opinion, which originally would have been the opinion of the court, that limited itself to this question did so in a pro-slavery way.