Actually, no. I stopped reading your "good description" after I read its first sentence.
Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, you know. Or maybe you don't.
ML/NJ
When you say that you read Dred Scott, did you quit reading at the first sentence? The author was calling Taney INCONSISTENT and therefore indefensible no matter WHAT your legal philosophy. Rigid in one place, yet “tortured meanings out of other, more-obscure clauses.”