Dred Scott v. Sandford
Dred Scott v. Sandford was a case brought before the United States Supreme Court in the years prior to the American Civil War. The case dealt with a man who had been a slave, and then moved with his master to a state that forbade slavery. When the master wanted to move back south, the slave (Dred Scott) protested, claiming that his residence in the free state had made him free. The Court's holding had three basic tenets:
- Persons of African descent could not be, nor were ever intended to be, citizens under the Constitution; because of this, Scott had no standing to file a suit.
- Congress could not ban slavery in the territories, and thus, the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional.
- The Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment prohibited the federal government from freeing slaves brought into federal territories.
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There was great outcry within the North against this ruling, as it basically made it impossible to abolish slavery anywhere. In its opinion, the Court held that slaves did not enjoy the "privileges and immunities" of citizenship. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution sought to supersede Dred Scott by defining citizenship and the "privileges and immunities" of citizenship.
Irony
This decision was originally brought forward to settle slavery tensions in the United States during the antebellum period once and for all. We all know how that turned out.
Modern meaning
In modern politics, Dred Scott is occasionally used as a dog whistle to disguise opposition to Roe v. Wade. To pro-lifers, just as Dred Scott ruled that African Americans have no rights, Roe v Wade ruled that fetuses have no rights.
The rather large differences between fully-actualized African American people and fetuses is covered up in this analogy (which has rather racist implications). It is also sometimes used as an example of "activist judges" giving an unjust ruling (just as Roe v Wade supposedly was an "activist" ruling that gave an "unjust" result), but the fact of the matter is that the primary injustice was the legality of slavery; any ruling that rejected slavery would have been "activist." If one believes that laws should be followed, and judges should not evaluate them according to their own consciences, then it doesn't make much sense to be bringing up slavery.