Well, no it wasn't.
It was historically inaccurate, since among other errors it claimed that blacks had never been part of the "people of the Unites States" that ratified the Constitution. In actual fact free blacks were full voting citizens in a number of states (disremember exact count), including North Carolina(!).
Some of these states later removed voting rights for free blacks, but that couldn't change their status when the Constitution was ratified.
Please see the dissents for real Constitutional analysis of the case.
It was also widely rumored that improper political pressure was brought to bear on some Justices to induce them to vote in favor of the majority decision.
The irony, of course, is that the decision was intended to bring an end to the slavery expansion debate, much as Roe v Wade was intended to bring an end to the debate on abortion.
All the South really succeeded in doing by "winning" the Dred Scott case was in destroying its longstanding alliance with the Northwest against the Northeast and in blowing up the national Whig and Democratic Parties. In fact, prior to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Dred Scott case, there had not been a "North" in the sense of a of a consciously united region.
In fact, the South, by its aggressive promotion of what it saw as its own interested, created "the North."
Sherman Logan:"Well, no it wasn't."
Thanks for pointing that out, and for making the cogent case.
I had overlooked it in my rush to make another obvious point: Dred-Scott fully demonstrates how supreme the Southern Slave Power actually was in the 1857 Federal government.
So there can be no legitimate claim that the South was not adequately represented, or that its interests weren't fully addressed in Washington.
Any talk about "Big Government" in Washington causing "injury or oppression" amongst sovereign slave-states is just nonsense.