For a decision that ruled that Dred Scott had no jurisdiction
You can't even help but get that all twisted and backwards.
The Court in Scott did not rule that Dred Scott had no jurisdiction. Taney opined that the Circuit Court had no jurisdiction. The Mandate remanded the case to the Circuit Court with instructions for that court to dismiss for want of jurisdiction. Taney so opined because Scott had falsely claimed to be a citizen of Missouri, and the claim of jurisdiction by diversity of citizenship of the two parties failed.
Dr. Walter Erlich wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Dred Scott case, and later published a book, They Have No Rights, Dred Scott's Struggle for Freedom, 1979, (Chapter 15, Taney: Opinion of the Court), pp. 137-38,
[*137] Whether Roger Brooke Taney’s opinion was in fact the Court’s opinion has been for a long time a matter of controversy. If an “Opinion of the Court” reflects the collective reasoning of the majority, valid questions can be raised about whose thinking and what majority Taney spoke for. Undoubtedly a majority concurred in the basic judgment that Dred Scott did not have the right to sue, and in that respect Taney did indeed speak for the Court. But beyond that, Taney’s colleagues differed markedly in the reasons why Scott could not sue, and for none of those reasons was there an indisputable concurring majority. Indeed, within three months after the decision was announced, two prominent Boston attorneys, John Lowell and Horace Gray, published a widely read article in which they delineated with scholarly thoroughness a “box score” of which justices agreed on which issues. Their analysis was followed by many others, some agreeing, some disagreeing, resulting in prolonged confusion for [*138] more than a century about exactly what the Court ruled. Today, however, qualified analysts generally hold that Taney did not accurately reflect the reasoning of a majority and that his “Opinion of the Court” was in fact not that at all. Nevertheless the fruitless exercise of determining and analyzing what the Court “really” said has continued. It is time we recognize—if we are better to understand the passions that brought on the Civil War—that despite this controversy, Taney’s opinion rightly or wrongly still has been viewed as the Court’s opinion. In a sense, then, what the Court really decided is moot; more important is what contemporaries thought the Court had decided.
There it is in a nutshell. What had become most important is not what the Court decided, but what contemporaries thought it had decided. The opinions formed were necessarily based on media reports, and those were based on the AP report of what was read from the bench by Chief Justice Taney. There is no transcript of what Taney orally stated in March 1861. The original draft was destroyed. The final draft of Taney's opinion (and the other's opinions) was not officially published until May 1861. During those months, Taney made revisions to his opinion. Justice Curtis wrote,
I have no doubt of the correctness of my memory subject. I heard the opinion read twice—once in conference and once from the bench. I listened to it with attention and believe I know where and in what it was changed. These additions amount to upwards of eighteen pages. No one can read them, without perceiving that they are in reply to my opinion.
The state citizenship of Scott had been ruled upon by the Supreme Court of Missouri, and as a matter of state law, that was final. There was no actual controversy. At the trial court the defense, conspiring with the other party, filed a demurrer, which asserted the Complaint is inadequate, even if the court accepts all its allegations as true. Accepting Scott's claim of Missouri citizenship as true allowed the trial court to rule in favor of Scott without considering the obvious point that Scott was a slave. The Circuit Court reversed. The Supreme Court majority divided on whether to uphold the Circuit Court and its reversal, or remand for lack of jurisdiction in Federal court, officially deciding on the latter. Either way, Scott was still a slave.
and a decision that merely upheld the law, you surely must realize the Dred Scott case lead to the last final fracturing of the Nation as existing half free, half slave.
Slavery was immoral and wrong, but it was within the law. If the Supreme Court can overturn any part of the Constitution it feels is wrong, then the Federal government reigns supreme over the Constitution. If they have such power, they could strike any part of the Bill of Rights.
That the nascent Republican party used race as a wedge issue to divide the people, and concocted a fraudulent and moot case and took it before the Supreme Court is acknowledged. In furtherance of the effort, it involved a palpably false statement of facts, a Massachusetts congressman as the hidden owner of the slave, a Massachusetts lawyer who argued to the Supreme Court, and said lawyer's little brother sitting on the bench of the Supreme Court. Even before the Court published anything, Justice Curtis ran his opinion to the publishers. In order to stir the pot, the opinion of Justice Curtis and the argument of his older brother were packaged together and published in pamphlet form before the Court officially published anything.
The was not an isolated incident for St. Louis, Missouri. Minor v. Happersett 88 U.S. 162 (1875) was another blatantly concocted case. The Supreme Court correctly held that the Constitution did not give women the right to vote. To this day, the Constitution does not give anyone the right to vote. The 19th amendment only assures the right to vote cannot be denied or abridged on account of sex. Any state could abolish its popular vote for President and have its legislature appoint the state's delegates to the Electoral College, as was actually done, under the Constitution, in the early elections. It is not the place of the court to create a constitutional right where it does not exist in the Constitution.
Scott was a slave. Slaves were not citizens. Scott could not legitimately invoke the jurisdiction of the Court with a claim of diversity of state citizenship which depended on his own (non-existent) Missouri state citizenship.
As you like quotes of justices, try this one. "Dred Scott ... probably helped to promote the Civil War, as it certainly required the Civil War to bury its dicta." Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, Bernard Schwartz, A History of the Supreme Court New York, Oxford, 1993, pp. 120-121.
The issue of slavery was used to split the nation for political gain. It got a little out of hand.
As for Northern fear of freed slaves coming north, Lincoln, ever the salesman, had a solution.
CW 5:534-35, President Lincoln, December 1, 1862, Annual Message to Congress
Heretofore colored people, to some extent, have fled north from bondage; and now, perhaps, from both bondage and destitution. But if gradual emancipation and deportation be adopted, they will have neither to flee from. Their old masters will give them wages at least until new laborers can be procured; and the freed men, in turn, will gladly give their labor for the wages, till new homes can be found for them, in congenial climes, and with people of their own blood and race. This proposition can be trusted on the mutual interests involved. And, in any event, cannot the north decide for itself, whether to receive them?
Lincoln rivals Bill Clinton's ability as a salesman.
Surely you know I meant the case had no standing.
”There it is in a nutshell.”
On this we can agree. That is why my initial instinct was to avoid engaging in an analysis of the case. It is the most controversial case in US history. But that is a very good quote by Erlich. Thank you for sharing. It supports both our sides.
What had become most important is not what the Court decided, but what contemporaries thought it had decided.”
That’s what I’ve been trying to get across to you. You’re getting there.......
”That the nascent Republican party used race as a wedge issue to divide the people, and concocted a fraudulent and moot case and took it before the Supreme Court is acknowledged.”
By whom? Don’t you have that backwards? Don’t you really mean to say the Republican Party came into being due to Slavery? You said race.
“Scott could not legitimately invoke the jurisdiction of the Court.......”
I guess it’s ok when you say it.
”"Dred Scott ... probably helped to promote the Civil War, as it certainly required the Civil War to bury its dicta."
That quote is not bad. In a cutesy, playful, spinny kind of way. Although in reality we can always count on you for the dicta. Right?
”The issue of slavery was used to split the nation for political gain. It got a little out of hand.”
Here you turn a big wide corner. Did you know that President Jefferson Davis said on several occasions the he would not give up until the very last confederate soldier was killed?
For the rest of your post, I say, “Objection! Irrelevant!”