Article IV says states have to respect other states slave laws. I take that to mean that in a contest between freedom laws of a free state, and slave laws of a slave state, the slave laws must always prevail.
Yeah, that's ugly, but that's what it says, and if Northern states didn't agree to it, they wouldn't have had to abide by it.
The lower courts were apparently unaware that laws freeing slaves, and laws holding them in bondage were inherently unequal in the requirements of the Constitution, with the slave laws having the superior legal position.
Again, don't blame me for pointing this out, but that was the law of that era.
What is that, the famous Heads I Win, Tails You Lose clause in the Constitution?
Again, you seem to be under the impression that Scott sued for his freedom in a free state. He did not. He was taken by his owner into both a free state, and free territory, lived there for years, even married and had a child there and was then returned by his owner to the slave state of Missouri. He sued in Missouri court for his freedom, and under well recognized Missouri law was awarded his freedom under the doctrine of "once free, always free."
No, no, no!
Article 4, Section 2 says only that states must return Fugitive Slaves, not that slave-holders are exempt from Free State abolition laws within those states.
So people like Roger Tanney and our own DiogenesLamp are clearly delusional in this regard.
Indeed, DiogenesLamp himself has no difficulty identifying Tanney's false reasoning regarding African-American citizenship, but since his delusions agree with Tanney on slave-state laws, they are both blind to the historical reality that the Founders' Constitution only intended to protect holders of Fugitive Slaves.
DiogenesLamp: "The lower courts were apparently unaware that laws freeing slaves, and laws holding them in bondage were inherently unequal in the requirements of the Constitution, with the slave laws having the superior legal position.
Again, don't blame me for pointing this out, but that was the law of that era."
But not only lower courts, but all courts before Dred-Scot correctly understood that the US Constitution allows states to make their own laws regarding slavery, and that, except in the case of Fugitive Slaves, no state could impose slavery on another.
So DiogenesLamp is not here pointing out "the law of that era", but strictly his own delusions of what he wished they would have been, had he been there to guide them.