Replies

Jim0216: "Taney’s argument was that if Congress could not go beyond its constitutional bounds in other areas, it also could not assume extra-constitutional powers in forbidding slavery in a territory.
So if Congress was constitutionally excluded from interfering with the slavery issue in both the states and in territories, then the Missouri Compromise was probably unconstitutional."

In today's American language the word "conservative" means a supporter of Constitution Founders' Original Intent, in the mold of, say, Justice Antonin Scalia.
"Founders Intent" is not what Chief Justice Taney argued in 1857, since clearly Founders intended and acted differently.
Instead, Taney argued in effect that, because Founders said "X", it must logically have meant "Y" and therefore the original Constitution itself is turned on its head, by SCOTUS decree.
Such is the logic from which today's penumbras and emanations proceed to underpin the Liberal Big Government state.

In fact, by the time of the Constitutional Convention (1787) the US Congress had already outlawed slavery in the Northwest Territories, and no Founders' debates challenged that authority or law.
Nor were later laws by Congress outlawing slavery in territories, or outlawing importing slaves from abroad, challenged by Founders on Constitutional grounds.

Further, Founders like George Washington explicitly recognized the authority of states like Pennsylvania to outlaw permanent transport of slaves into their free states.
Washington in Philadelphia cycled his slaves in & out of Pennsylvania to keep within the limits of state abolition laws.

So Taney in 1857 was doing not what Constitutionalists do, but rather what Democrats congenitally and compulsively do: conjuring new constitutional "penumbras" and "emanations" out of pure ether.

Finally, we should note that here Jim 0216 makes the same argument DiogenesLamp makes in many previous threads, and I'd like to say they should not be granted exalted recognition as the "troglodyte wing of the conservative movement."
They are, in fact, making the Democrats argument, and so should be considered by us as Democrats, pure, simple and wrong.

No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

The US Constitution refutes your point. You may now spew forth your denials.

Until your personal swipe at the end, I liked your post which may very well be a good argument in favor of Congress having the power to declare territories slave-free. The inherent rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness mentioned in the Declaration of Independence and presumed in the Constitution can probably be inferred to run afoul of slave ownership. All of that goes on the side of Congress having constitutional power to make territories slave free.

However, I think the Full Faith and Credit Clause was in play between the states since slavery was not as yet unconstitutional.

I’m sorry you, BroJoeK, have decided to pull an ad hominem on me fallaciously deciding that I must be a Democrat if something in my argument appears to you to be the same as some Democrat.

That is uncalled for, a logical fallacy, and rude. You obviously did no research at all on my posts or my website https://sonsofconstitutionalliberty.com/ which I refer to many times. If you had, you wouldn’t have made such ignorant and stupid statements. I’ll try not to include you in further discussions of mine.