But you are legally prevented from interfering with the institution (as it were) of abortion, even should you consider the practice to be infanticide. Even so-called partial birth abortion is protected, including the vacuuming of a human brain.
If one assumes the position that abortion is infanticide, then there is little that can be said about the evils of slavery that cannot be said about the evils of abortion.
People were free not to own slaves then. But the Constitution, as interpreted by the courts, enjoined them from preventing others from doing so.
Such issues should be resolved by the legislature, not the courts. We do not have courts of justice, we have courts of law. Our courts are supposed to render rulings based on what the law actually is, not what they or the public think it ought to be. If the law is wrong, the legislature should fix it. To fix the Constitution, there should be an amendment.
[donmeaker] It should be noted that the Dred Scott decision was reversed by a the War of the Rebellion, followed by the 13th and 14th amendments. To me that would be pretty clear evidence that the decision was wrong.
That the 13th amendment was necessary only confirms the correctness of the decision of Judge Taney. The problem was not Taney's ruling, but the Constitution itself. When the war of Northern Aggression was over, the problem still existed in the Constitution. The Constitution was amended and the problem was solved.
Which side won a war could not determine the correctness of the decision in Dred Scott. Had the South won, slavery would still have been just as wrong. Judge Taney only interpreted what the Constitution said, not whether it was right or wrong.
[donmeaker] It was in response to the D.S. decision that the Republicans platform hoped to limit slavery to the states where it was already existing. That decison should have able to be put into practice by a simple majority vote on such a law, as occured with the Northwest Ordinance.
No, it required a Constitutional amendment.
More accurately, the anti-slavery faction sought to add non-slave states until they had a 3/4ths majority.
[donmeaker] Because of Dred Scott, which abandoned such precedent, the Republicans were faced with a requirement to put through a 3/4s vote for a constitutional amendment.
It is not because of Dred Scott, but because of the Constitution. On passage of the 13th Amendment, and the cessation of holding out human beings to be property, the problem became nonexistent.
The problem is the deal made at the time of the Constitution itself. We wanted Virginia. Virginia possessed great wealth. To Virginia belonged possessions from which the states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota were formed.
To get Virginia and other southern states, we made a deal to allow slavery. It has been termed a deal with the devil. At the time, every state was a slave state except for Massachusetts. The attitude of the North changed, the attitude of the South did not. The constitution had not changed. The 13th amendment was the required legal change.
after most of the northern slaveowners sold their slaves in the late 1850s (slavery was quickly dying an un-lamented death by then due to improvements in agriculture), the radical republicans THEN decided that slavery should be abolished. nice, huh?
this sequence of events clearly illustrates that the so-called anti-slavery movement was just about $$$$$$$$.nothing more, nothing less.
free dixie,sw