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To: Ohioan
There is no comparison, whatsoever, to Dred Scott

I thought the comparison was explained very well.

24 posted on 04/11/2005 9:34:21 AM PDT by tutstar ( <{{--->< Impeach Judge Greer http://www.petitiononline.com/ijg520/petition.html)
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To: tutstar

To be honest...I don't see much of a comparison either.

In Dred Scott, the Court held that, a slave was property...nothing more...and that the federal government, through the legislation known as the Missouri Compromise, could not deprive a slaveowner of his property without due process of law under the 5th Amendment.

This was the first use by the Court of the legal fiction known as substantive due process (I think there may have been a case or two before Dred Scott...but those involved questions or both procedural and substantive due process).

Substantive due process...which the author indicates should have been invoked by the federal courts in the Sciavo case has been used by courts throughout the 20th century just as the Dred Scott Court used it...to overturn, legitimate, constitutionally-enacted legislation that the Courts don't like....most notably in the Roe v Wade case.

Not only is that a wrong reading of the language and intent behind the 14th Amendment but its hardly something any of us should be advocating



This piece also has a lot of inaccuracies in it...while Dred Scott held the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional...it did not void it...the Compromise had been replaced by the Kansas-Nebraska Act years before the Supreme Court heard the Dred Scott case.


34 posted on 04/11/2005 10:08:36 AM PDT by Irontank (Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under)
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