Posted on 03/06/2007 11:54:14 AM PST by Borges
Roe v. Wade is the worst, resulting in the deaths of 41 million US citizens and qualifying us for the severe punishment that God will visit on our country.
It was one of the worst. To my mind it's a tie with Roe vs. Wade. I'd wager that more blacks have been legally murdered by abortionists than were ever murdered by slave holders, task masters or the KKK all combined for the entire history of American slavery.
Rarely is such a bad legal decision also responsible for a major economic dislocation as well.
Gibbons v. Ogden - because it sowed the seeds of the undoing of government limited by express powers.
Certainly Roe and Dred Scott are right up there. I would also nominate Lawrence v. Texas--the "sodomy is a sacred constitutional right" case filled with Justice Kennedy's vaporings. Like Roe and Dred Scott, Lawrence was deeply subversive of the Constitution and the proper role of Courts and the State and Federal Government in the Constitutional scheme.
I can think of a lot worst cases than Dred Scott. Dred Scott is a bad ruling under todays standards, but was not out of order for the time period.
My favorite "worst" is "Cows Don't Vote" aka "One Man, One Vote." It has resulted in "Rural Cleansing" of red voting counties all over America. Taxation with really, REALLY rotten representation!!!
A decision worse than one which said an entire race were not and could never be citizens and who had no rights that a white man was bound to respect? Which ones?
Sparf vs US (1895 I think) is the single worst decision. The court ruled that although juries have the right to ignore a judge's instructions on the law, they don't have to be made aware of the right to do so.
It effectively gives total power to judges, prosecutors, and defenders while rendering juries powerless. One notable case where jurors were made fully aware of their rights was the Randy Weaver trial.
I agree with you about the Civil War.
In some respects, I'm amazed it didn't happen sooner.
The only thing laws like the Missouri Compromise, etc, achieved was to push back war's inevitability.
Wickard v. Fillburn is up there near the top of the worst. That's the decision that gave the federal gvmt. unfettered power. Then again, it was at least kind of sort of based on something actually in the Constitution. Roe can't even say that much.
I'd call it a tie. Both the Dred Scott decision and Roe v. Wade basically declared that a whole class of human beings had no rights because they were not really human.
If we ever get a ruling finding a constitutional right for the state to mandate euthanasia of the sick, handicapped, and elderly, that will make it a trifecta.
Marbury vs. Madison because it gave the USSC the self-proclaimed right to decide what is constitutional and what is not. It took the arbitration of government away from the people and their legislatures and placed it with the courts.
The worst decision of all time was in Wickard v. Filburn, because it prevents burn-outs like me from smoking weed.
It was the Compromise of 1850, partially repealing the Missouri Compromise, that really stirred things up and led to the foundation of the Republican Party. War at some point was probably inevitable after that.
It was national law at the time, and I think up to 1960 that only whites could be citizens. The ruling had no bearing on his rights in a free state, it was just in the slave states he could not seek federal relief. The rights of people have never been secured under national govt, and this is probably why the framers secured the liberties and rights of the people with them under their own State constitutions.
Yes I know there was some states who would think nothing of enslaving a man because of his color, but no govt is perfect, and if all the rights of men were secured soley under the federal govt slavery would still be alive and well today.
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