History of the United States I / Unit 14 USH1 2000 review, 2 to 3 minutes
Taney's Ruling
The idea
In eighteen fifty-seven Chief Justice Roger Taney, himself a former slaveholder who had freed the people he held, delivered the Court's decision. He ruled three things. Dred Scott remained enslaved. Black people could never be citizens of the United States, since a free Black person, in Taney's words, is not a citizen within the meaning of the Constitution. And Congress lacked authority to limit slavery's spread into the territories, because enslaved people were property protected by the federal government and Congress could not stop a citizen taking with him his slaves when he removes to the Territory. The second and third holdings had immediate consequences. The Missouri Compromise of eighteen twenty was unconstitutional and had been all along, and popular sovereignty was implicitly invalidated, since a territorial majority could not forbid what Congress itself could not forbid. Scott had sued on the ground that residence in free territory made him free, and the Court's citizenship holding removed his ability to bring the suit in a federal court at all.
In practice
A single decision striking down the geographic line of eighteen twenty and the local-majority principle of eighteen fifty, in the same opinion, on the same reasoning.
Where people slip
This is the most important constitutional entry in the course, and the reason is structural rather than moral. Before eighteen fifty-seven there were two ways to contain the quarrel. One was the line of eighteen twenty, which divided the country geographically. The other was popular sovereignty, which handed the question to whoever settled a territory. Taney destroyed both at once, and after Dred Scott there was no constitutional middle position left for anyone to occupy. Note what that does to the Republican Party. Its entire platform was stopping slavery's expansion by act of Congress, and the Court had now held that Congress may not do it. A party whose central policy has been ruled unconstitutional has few options left.
Your place on the trail
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