When Law Denies the Person
Article by Ayman Fouad Abdelgawad
Dred Scott v. Sandford
The case
Dred Scott, an enslaved man, argued that residence with his family in free territory had made them free. The litigation required the Court to address Scott's standing in federal court and the constitutional status of slavery in the territories.
What the Court decided
Chief Justice Roger Taney's opinion declared that people of African descent whose ancestors had been brought to the United States and enslaved were not citizens within the Constitution's meaning and that Scott therefore could not sue in federal court. The opinion went further, concluding that Congress lacked power to prohibit slavery in the territories and treating the Missouri Compromise restriction as unconstitutional.
The decision is remembered as a profound constitutional failure. The Civil War Amendments repudiated its central premises: the Thirteenth abolished slavery, the Fourteenth established birthright citizenship and equal protection, and the Fifteenth addressed racial discrimination in voting.
Why it is worth thinking about
Not every landmark deserves admiration. Some decisions matter because they show how legal method can be used to fortify injustice. Dred Scott clothed exclusion in the language of history, property and jurisdiction, converting a human claim to freedom into an occasion for enlarging slavery's constitutional protection.
My reflection is that legality cannot excuse us from moral attention. A judgment may be elaborate, authoritative and catastrophically wrong at the same time. The case also warns against pretending that a court stands outside the society whose hierarchies it interprets.
The proper response is not to abandon law, but to read it without reverence for authority alone. Constitutional interpretation deserves respect only when it remains answerable to the people whose status and freedom it defines.
Read the decision
Dred Scott v. Sandford — archived U.S. Reports scan (PDF)
60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857). Reading reference: pp. 399–454 in the printed report. Archive: Library of Congress, United States Reports collection.