Debts? Supremacy? Oaths? To what do you refer? If supremacy, what clause in the Constitution grants it in this case?
Taney believed in twisting the Constitution six ways from Sunday.
You want a living Constitution? He was a strict constructionist.
Where in the document can you find support for his asinine interpretation?
Asinine? 7-2 is hardly asinine. Again, there was no federal citizenship. The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited it to whites, and 'on application to any common law court of record, in any one of the states wherein lie shall have resided for the term of one year at least.' A state could also prevent an alien from being naturalized, 'no person heretofore proscribed by any state, shall be admitted a citizen as aforesaid, except by an act of the legislature of the state in which such person was proscribed.'
The Militia Act of 1795 cited above limited service to 'able-bodied white male citizen of the respective States.
If the Constitution supported federal citizenship for blacks, we wouldn't have needed the 14th Amendment. Where in the document can you find support for any other asinine interpretation?
Supremacy. In this case the par that says the Constitution "...and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." South Carolina's law that allowed them to seize British Subjects and sell them into slavery was a violation of agreements made with the Great Britain. That should trump state law, and would to any lawyer who's agenda didn't override their understanding of the Constitution.
You want a living Constitution? He was a strict constructionist.
Absolute nonsense.
Asinine? 7-2 is hardly asinine.
One justice wrote the opinion, not seven. One justice put his pre-conceived agenda into that opinion, not seven. And only one found restrictions in the Constitution that no sane man would find.
f the Constitution supported federal citizenship for blacks, we wouldn't have needed the 14th Amendment. Where in the document can you find support for any other asinine interpretation?
The 14th Amendment was required to override the Scott v. Sanford decision. Nothing in the Constitution can be read as denying citizenship based on race, with the specific exception of Indians.
And another thing. A 'strict constructionist' would have found that Scott had no standing to bring his case to the Supreme Court since he was property and not a person, upheld the lower court ruling, and ended it there. But Taney was no constructionist. He was the worst kind of liberal jurist, finding all sorts of meaning in the Constitution to support he pre-conceived opinions.