Dredd Scott

1. Take Chief Justice Taneys opinion in Dred Scott seriously: What are the actual holdings of the
opinion?
1. Taney can not only be a citizen of Missouri, he, nor any other slave, is a citizen period.
2.

How does he reach his conclusion that slaves are not citizens under the Constitution (hint:
walk through note 2 on pp. 284-88). Do you find any of his arguments convincing (or at least
more convincing)? Which ones? Why? Does Dred Scott uphold the institution of slavery? If
not, what does it do, precisely?
1.

At the time the Constitution was written, slaves were considered an inferior and
subordinate class. No state can introduce a new member into the political community
created by the Constitution.
The Declaration of Independence clearly never intended to include slaves.
The Constitution never intended to confer on slaves or their posterity the blessings of
liberty, or any of the personal rights so carefully provided for the citizen. Plaintiff is
clearly not a citizen and not entitled to sue.

2. Under Articles III and IV, argued Taney, no one but a citizen of the United States could be
a citizen of a state, and that only Congress could confer national citizenship.
3. Not only does it officially disallow slaves to sue for their own freedom, Justice Taney
further elaborates saying that Congress has no right to make laws regarding slaves by
striking down the Missouri compromise as being one that infringes on property rights.
3. What are the key points of Justice Curtiss famous dissent? Does Curtis make the best arguments
against Taneys opinion? What else might he have said? Do you find Curtis convincing on his
own terms?
1. Once the Court determined that it did not have jurisdiction to hear Scott's case, it must
simply dismiss the action, and not pass judgment on the merits of the claims.
2. We need to interpret the constitution; blacks born in the US can be citizens.
3.

there were jurisdictions in which citizenship was granted to freed slaves. He further
argues that there are protections given to the native borne, implying that citizenship can
be granted by birth. This could then grant citizenship to the Scotts, because they had all
been born in the United States, one child in Iowa, and another in Missouri.

4. Why does Taney strike down the Missouri Compromise? (Hint: check out note 5 on pages 28990). Why was this holding so important? Did Taneys decision therefore accelerate the Civil War,
or at least render it inevitable? What does note 8 (pp. 291-92) say on this point?
1. It deprived property owners (slave owners) of the right to take their property anywhere in
the United States, thus depriving them of life, liberty and property under the 5th

Amendment. Any line, or law, that limited the right of slave owners to utilize their
property was unconstitutional.
2. An act of Congress, which deprives a citizen of his property merely because he brought
his property into a particular part of the United States does not comport with due process
of law. The right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the
Constitution. An act of Congress, which prohibits a citizen from owning slaves in any
territory in the United States is void. So, Plaintiff did not become free by going into a
state, which prohibited slavery.
It would be easy to dismiss Dred Scott as a terrible and backwards opinion written by an admittedly proslavery Chief Justice. But given the text of the Constitution as written, could Taney have come out
differently? How?
Use some gosh darn interpretation.
The Supreme Court first concluded that African Americans were not citizens as defined by the
Constitution, and therefore, the Supreme Court and lower federal courts had no jurisdiction to hear this
case. The decision cited Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution which gives federal courts the power to
hear cases between Citizens of different States. To determine the definition of citizens, the justices
considered the intent of the framers of the Constitution. They noted that at the time the Constitution was
written, people of African descent, both slave and free, were regarded as beings of an inferior order and
were so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect. Believing that
the Court should not give to the words of the Constitution a more liberal construction than they were
intended to bear when the instrument was framed and adopted, the Court concluded that people of
African descent were not citizens, and could therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that
instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. This included the ability to bring
suit in federal court.
Even though the Court determined that it did not have jurisdiction to hear this case because it did not
involve Citizens of different States, the justices ruled on the merits of case anyway. They first argued
that the power of Congress to regulate the internal workings of the territories that had not yet become
states was limited. They concluded that an act of Congress prohibiting citizens from owning [slaves] in
the territor[ies] is not warranted by the Constitution, and is therefore void. The Court thereby struck
down the Missouri Compromise as unconstitutional because Congress did not have the power under the
Constitution to determine whether slavery was allowed in the territories, even those these were not states.
In addition, the Court concluded that slaves could not be made free simply by entering a free state or
territory. This would deprive slave owners of their property without giving them due process of law as
required by the Fifth Amendment. Accordingly, an act of Congress which deprives a citizen of the
United States of his property, merely because he brought his property into a particular Territory of
the United States was unconstitutional. The Court held, therefore, that Dred Scott and his family were
property and were not made free simply by virtue of the fact that they were brought into a free territory.

In Dred Scott v. Sandford (argued 1856 -- decided 1857), the Supreme Court ruled that Americans of
African descent, whether free or slave, were not American citizens and could not sue in federal court. The
Court also ruled that Congress lacked power to ban slavery in the U.S. territories. Finally, the Court
declared that the rights of slaveowners were constitutionally protected by the Fifth Amendmentbecause
slaves were categorized as property.
The controversy began in 1833, when Dr. John Emerson, a surgeon with the U.S. Army, purchased Dred
Scott, a slave, and eventually moved Scott to a base in the Wisconsin Territory. Slavery was banned in the
territory pursuant to the Missouri Compromise. Scott lived there for the next four years, hiring himself
out for work during the long stretches when Emerson was away. In 1840, Scott, his new wife, and their
young children moved to Louisiana and then to St. Louis with Emerson. Emerson died in 1843, leaving
the Scott family to his wife, Eliza Irene Sanford. In 1846, after laboring and saving for years, the Scotts
sought to buy their freedom from Sanford, but she refused. Dred Scott then sued Sanford in a state court,
arguing that he was legally free because he and his family had lived in a territory where slavery was
banned. In 1850, the state court finally declared Scott free. However, Scott's wages had been withheld
pending the resolution of his case, and during that time Mrs. Emerson remarried and left her brother, John
Sanford, to deal with her affairs. Mr. Sanford, unwilling to pay the back wages owed to Scott, appealed
the decision to the Missouri Supreme Court. The court overturned the lower court's decision and ruled in
favor of Sanford. Scott then filed another lawsuit in a federal circuit court claiming damages against
Sanford's brother, John F.A. Sanford, for Sanford's alleged physical abuse against him. The jury ruled that
Scott could not sue in federal court because he had already been deemed a slave under Missouri law. Scott
appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which reviewed the case in 1856. Due to a clerical error at the time,
Sanford's name was misspelled in court records.
The Supreme Court, in an infamous opinion written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, ruled that it lacked
jurisdiction to take Scott's case because Scott was, or at least had been, a slave. First, the Court argued
that they could not entertain Scott's case because federal courts, including the Supreme Court, are courts
of "peculiar and limited jurisdiction" and may only hear cases brought by select parties involving limited
claims. For example, under Article III of the U.S. Constitution, federal courts may only hear cases
brought by "citizens" of the United States. The Court ruled that because Scott was "a negro, whose
ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves," and thus "[not] a member of the political
community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution," Scott was not a citizen and had no
right to file a lawsuit in federal court.
Second, the Court argued that Scott's status as a citizen of a free state did not necessarily give him status
as a U.S. citizen. While the states were free to create their own citizenship criteria, and had done so before
the Constitution even came into being, the Constitution gives Congress exclusive authority to define
national citizenship. Moreover, the Court argued that even if Scott was deemed "free" under the laws of a
state, he would still not qualify as an American citizen because he was black. The Court asserted that, in
general, U.S. citizens are only those who were members of the "political community" at the time of the
Constitution's creation, along with those individuals' heirs, and slaves were not part of this community.

Finally, the Court argued that, in any case, Scott could not be defined as free by virtue of his residency in
the Wisconsin Territory, because Congress lacked the power to ban slavery in U.S. territories. The Court
viewed slaves as "property," and the Fifth Amendment forbids Congress from taking property away from
individuals without just compensation. Justice Benjamin Curtis issued a strongdissent.