INTRODUCTION TO THE COURT OPINION ON THE DRED SCOTT CASE
Dred Scott's case holds a unique place in American constitutional history as an example of the Supreme Court trying to impose a judicial solution on a political problem. It called down enormous criticism on the Court and on Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney; a later chief justice, Charles Evans Hughes, described it as a great "self-inflicted wound."
Scott, born a slave, had been taken by his master, an army surgeon, into the free portion of the Louisiana territory. Upon his master's death, Scott sued for his freedom, on the grounds that since slavery was outlawed in the free territory, he had become a free man there, and "once free always free." The argument was rejected by a Missouri court, but Scott and his white supporters managed to get the case into federal court, where the issue was simply whether a slave had standing -- that is, the legal right -- to sue in a federal court. So the first question the Supreme Court had to decide was whether it had jurisdiction. If Scott had standing, then the Court had jurisdiction, and the justices could go on to decide the merits of his claim. But if, as a slave, Scott did not have standing, then the Court could dismiss the suit for lack of jurisdiction.
The Court ruled that Scott, as a slave, could not exercise the prerogative of a free citizen to sue in federal court. That should have been the end of the case, but Chief Justice Taney and the other southern sympathizers on the Court hoped that a definitive ruling would settle the issue of slavery in the territories once and for all. So they went on to rule that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional since Congress could not forbid citizens from taking their property, i.e., slaves, into any territory owned by the United States. A slave, Taney ruled, was property, nothing more, and could never be a citizen.
The South, of course, welcomed the ruling, but in the North it raised a storm of protest and scorn. It helped create the Republican Party, and disgust at the decision may have played a role in the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860.
For further reading: Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case (1978); Walter Ehrlich, They Have No Rights: Dred Scott's Struggle for Freedom (1979).
There will be a price to pay for this judicial tyranny.
"Let us not talk falsely now--the hour is getting late."
Roy Benavidez CMH winner whose hands moved so fast making the sign of the cross "I looked like an airplane prop"--
Fifty wounds, saved his wounded buddies, directed fire at the enemy--and practiced his faith--
He would later say, "Hero? No, just doing my duty."