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A Fatal Loss Of Balance: Dred Scott Revisited , Daniel A. Farber

Daniel A Farber

This essay focuses on three aspects of the Dred Scott opinion: its effort to ensure that blacks could never be citizens, let alone equal ones; its deployment of a "limited government" argument for a narrow interpretation of Congress's enumerated power over the territories; and its path-breaking defense of property rights against government regulation. These constitutional tropes of racism, narrowing of federal power, and protection of property were to remain dominant for another seventy-five years. Apart from the failings of the opinion itself, Dred Scott also represents an extraordinary case of presidential tampering with the judicial process and a breakdown in …

Dred Scott, John San(D)Ford, And The Case For Collusion, David T. Hardy

David T. Hardy

Dred Scott v. John F. A. Sandford was one of the most critical cases in Supreme Court history, “an astonisher,” as Lincoln phrased it. In the “Opinion of the Court,” which was not actually the opinion of the Court (parts of it mustered only three votes), Chief Justice Taney stretched to insulate slavery in every way manageable. The ruling became instead an application of the “law of unintended consequences.” It led to the rise of Abraham Lincoln (who devoted much of his “House Undivided” speech to it), the destruction of Stephen Douglas’ presidential campaign (since it held his core position …

Table Annexed To Article: “The Idea Of Freedom Might Be Too Great A Temptation For Them To Resist,”, Peter Aschenbrenner

Peter J. Aschenbrenner

In Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857), the Supreme Court passed up a chance to thread George Washington’s experience in transporting household staff across state lines; Washington obeyed Pennsylvania’s predicate: that a human being held to slavery in one state became free after six months in Pennsylvania. Since the features of this species of mobilia varied with the jurisdiction, the Supreme Court should have taken this landscape into account. George Washington did not import, with his household workers, ‘rules and understandings’ from Virginia.

“The Idea Of Freedom Might Be Too Great A Temptation For Them To Resist", Peter J. Aschenbrenner

Peter J. Aschenbrenner

Table Annexed To Article: Mr. Taney’S ‘Capital Gap’: Charting The Growth Of The Federal Colony System, 1789-1960, Peter Aschenbrenner

Peter J. Aschenbrenner

When Chief Justice Roger Taney conceded the existence of ‘colonies … established and maintained’ by the federal government, albeit denying ‘power given’ in the Constitution, he had the corpus of American history to contend with. The ‘capital gap,’ as OCL defines it, supplies several measures: the balance of power between regions, the remaining inventory of nascent (ready to be made) states (=territories), the remaining inventory of available territories in gross or subdividable, and for the latter two, the net of these inventories on a regional basis. Taney’s opinion, in this fourth in a series, rises or falls on the historical …

Mr. Taney’S ‘Capital Gap’: Charting The Growth Of The Federal Colony System, 1789-1960, Peter J. Aschenbrenner

Peter J. Aschenbrenner

When Chief Justice Roger Taney conceded the existence of ‘colonies … established and maintained’ by the federal government, albeit denying ‘power given’ in the Constitution, he had the corpus of American history to contend with. The ‘capital gap,’ as OCL defines it, supplies several measures: the balance of power between regions, the remaining inventory of nascent (ready to be made) states (=territories), the remaining inventory of available territories in gross or subdividable, and for the latter two, the net of these inventories on a regional basis. Taney’s opinion, in this fourth in a series, rises or falls on the historical …

Majority Rule Not A Clearly Stated Component Of United States Constitution Or Supreme Court Decisions-Supreme Court And Judicial Rulings Could Even Be Seen As Advisory Not Binding Based On The Us Constitution, James T. Struck

James T Struck

Majority rule may play a role in the election of a president, but the Constitution does not apply such rule to the Supreme Court or other courts in a stated or clear way. Supreme Court decisions may be seen as advisory based on the lack of mention of judicial roles in the US Constitution, but contempt concepts indicate that judicial decisions are supposed to be seen as binding. Many judicial decisions can be seen as advisory, although clearly tradition has seen judicial rulings as binding and enforceable rather than advisory. From the perspective of the US Constitution, we could see …

Dred Scott Vs. The Dred Scott Case: History And Memory Of A Signal Moment In American Slavery, 1857-2007, Adam Arenson

Adam Arenson

The Dred Scott Case centered on the Scott family—Dred and Harriet, and their daughters Eliza and Lizzie—but in the recorded history, after March 6, 1857 the Scotts suddenly fade, as if their lives ended that day in the courthouse. They did not. Elsewhere I have examined how the Dred Scott decision catalyzed the transformation of St. Louis politics, turning Missouri toward gradual emancipation just as the South’s proslavery advocates were declaring victory. And I have described how the Scotts’ lives were recovered to memory through the actions spearheaded by their descendents. Here I chronicle how the legacies of the Dred …

Haunted By History's Ghostly Gaps: A Literary Critique Of The Dred Scott Decision And Its Historical Treatments, Allen P. Mendenhall

Allen Mendenhall

In his opinion for the majority, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney eliminates Dred Scott the man from the text and divests Scott of a body, thereby transforming him into a sort of incorporeal ghost that signals the traces and tropes of slavery. Subsequent historians, journalists, and politicians have made Scott even more inaccessible by either relying on Taney’s text, which erases Scott, or by failing to recover Scott’s narrative. Taney’s opinion codified “the facts” of the case as official or authoritative despite a lack of reference to their human subject. Later writers relied on this received version despite its obvious …

Lincoln At 200: On Lincoln's Statesmanship, Dred Scott And Constitutional Evil, Harry F. Tepker Jr.

Harry F. Tepker Jr.

No abstract provided.