¶ … Supreme Court of the United States is commonly held to be the last bastion of getting a legal standard correct and complete. While legal precedents shift and change over time, the court eventually "gets it right" or at least comes to a settled position. However, there are other times where the court clearly gets it wrong and technically ensconces something that is wrong-minded and ill-conceived. Although Plessy v. Ferguson is up there (and for much the same reason), the Dred Scott case came first and has been deemed as one of the most egregious (and racist) decisions in the course of the history of the United States. While then-Chief Justice Taney believed the decision to be on solid legal ground, the case's decision was eventually overturned and it was a reversal that never should have been necessary.
Analysis
Dred Scott was a born slave, having been born in 1799 in Virginia. He was owned as a slave by the family of Peter Blow. The family later moved to Alabama and took Scott with them. The family later decided to eschew farming and instead decided to run a boarding house. Concurrent to that, ownership of Scott was changed over to John Emerson. A member of the Army, Emerson moved all over the place as he took on post after post and Scott was required to come along with him. Even though he was a slave, Scott ended up meeting his future wife at one of those posts and he married Harriet Robinson in Wisconsin, what was actually a free area. His new wife was actually a slave owned by someone else. This was interesting as the marriage of slaves was not allowed for back then. This would come into play later when the Supreme Court case was heard. In any event, there came a point later where Dred's wife was transferred to Emerson so that both Dred and his wife were owned by the same person. Emerson served out his career and later died. The ownership of the Scotts was then extended as part of his estate. Fed up with being a slave, Scott tried to extend $300 to purchase his freedom. The widow of the estate of Mr. Emerson, that being Irene Emerson, refused the offer. It was at that point that Scott tried to get his freedom via legal means (PBS, 2016).
The Scotts were being housed and controlled in Missouri at the time, so Dred Scott took his grievance to the Saint Louis circuit court. Scott actually had a heck of a case. Scott himself resided for two years in a free area and was technically treated as a free man, with the marriage to his wife being one of the main reasons. Once a slave was treated as being free, he was to remain that way in many to most cases. Further, the oldest daughter of the Scotts was born in a free area and thus she should be free given the precedent that existed at the time. There were two trials done in 1847. The first one went against Scott with one problem being that the ownership of Scott was proven yet was disregarded as being hearsay. The case was retried and the case was found in Scott's favor. Irene Emerson appealed and the Missouri Supreme Court struck down the judgement in Dred Scott's favor. The reason for the striking was stated as being because Missouri had no duty to honor the path and decisions of the free states. This was no small thing because nearly thirty year of decisions were reversed in terms of precedent in the making of that decision (PBS, 2016).
Scott would not be satisfied with this decision, for obvious reasons, so he took up the same case at the federal level. The case was accepted by the federal court because Scott had been sold to a man in New York but Scott was still subject to Missouri standards. However, this was the only bit of good news as the court decided, this being in March 1857, that Scott was not going to win ... and for three reasons. First, it was noted that people that are black are not citizens of the United States and this was true whether a black man was free or slave. Second, there was a law known as the Ordinance of 1787. This law stated much the same thing as the first point in the decision as it noted that citizenship could not be extended to non-white people if they existed and lived in the Northwest territories. Lastly, the Supreme Court case pointed to the Missouri Compromise. Apparently, there...
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