Dred Scott Case In The Supreme Court

Dred Scott Case in the Supreme Court in the United States

Dred Scott Case: Scott’s Case in the Supreme Court

Introduction to Dred Scott Case in the Supreme Court

Scott then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court heard his case in the spring of 1856 but did not decide it that year. Instead, the Court ordered new arguments, to be conducted in December 1856, after the upcoming presidential election. Montgomery Blair, who would later serve as postmaster general in the Cabinet of President Abraham Lincoln, and George T. Curtis, brother of Supreme Court Justice Benjamin R. Curtis, represented Scott for free. U.S. Senator Henry S. Geyer of Missouri, and Reverdy Johnson, a Maryland politician and close friend of Chief Justice Taney, represented Scott’s owner. In March 1857 the Court ruled in a 7-to-2 decision that Scott was still a slave and therefore not entitled to sue in court. For the first time in history, each of the nine justices on the Court wrote an opinion in the same case, explaining their various positions on the Court’s decision.

Chief Justice Taney’s 54-page majority opinion of the Court had wide-ranging effects. In it he argued that free blacks-even those who could vote in the states where they lived-could never be U.S. citizens. At the time some or all adult black males could vote in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, and New York, and blacks had held public office in Ohio and Massachusetts. Nevertheless, Taney declared that even if a black was a citizen of a state, “It does not by any means follow . . . that he must be a citizen of the United States.” Taney based this unprecedented legal argument entirely on race. Although he knew that some blacks had voted at the time of the ratification of the Constitution of the United States in 1787, Taney nevertheless argued that blacks “are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution . . . On the contrary, they were at that time (1787) considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and . . . had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and Government might choose to grant them.”

In words that shocked much of the North, Taney declared blacks were “so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” Taney concluded that blacks could never be citizens of the United States, even if they were born in the country and considered to be citizens of the states in which they lived. This also meant that Dred Scott had no right to sue for his freedom in a federal court.

Taney then turned to the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise. Many Republicans would later argue that Taney’s judgment on the Missouri Compromise was dicta-a statement made by a judge that is unnecessary to the outcome of the case. These critics asserted that if Dred Scott could not legally sue, then the case was not legally before the Court, and thus discussion of the Missouri Compromise was unnecessary to the decision and not legally binding.

Whether it was dicta or not, Taney discussed the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise and the debate over slavery in the territories. His goal was to finally settle the status of slavery in the territories in favor of the South. Ignoring the plain language of the Constitution, Taney argued that Congress did not have power to pass laws to regulate anything, including slavery, in the territories.

Taney also argued that any law that prohibited a master from taking a slave into the territories violated the Fifth Amendment, which protected the right to private property. Taney wrote that “the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution.” (1)

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Notes and References

Guide to Dred Scott Case in the Supreme Court

In this Section

Dred Scott Case, Dred Scott Case Background, Dred Scott’s Life, Dred Scott Case in the Supreme Court, Dred Scott Case Dissents and Dred Scott Case Significance.


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