NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
The Dredd Scott case involved a landmark decision in the history of the Supreme Court, in the history of the United States the decision in this case was one of the most damaging statements in the history of the Supreme Court, involving the citizenship of a black person in the United States, and the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise in 1820. The history of a black man named Dredd Scott states that he was a slave originally owed by a family by the name of Blow, which ended up selling him in 1833 to an army surgeon by the name of Dr. John Emerson of St. Luis. Due to his involvement as an army surgeon, Emerson was transferred to numerous places such as Rock Island, Illinois, Fort Snelling in the Wisconsin Territory then back to St. Louis in the end of 1838.
Scott had accompanied Emerson throughout this period. Emerson had taken Scott to places that forbidden slavery according to the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and Scott was even allowed to marry during this! time period on free territory, his companion being a woman who was also a slave owned by Emerson. As Emerson and Scott had returned to St.
Louis, a territory where slavery was legal, Emerson died and Scott was left to his widow, who eventually gave Scott back to his original owners, the Blows. Henry Blow, Scott's original master, was opposed to the extension of slavery into the Western territories, and Blow lent Scott's residence on free soil in Illinois and Wisconsin Territory had made him a free man. In 1846, Dredd Scott brought suit in the state court on the grounds that residence in a free territory released him from slavery. A lower state court had found to be in favor of Scott, but in 1852, the Supreme Court of Missouri ruled that upon his return to territory where slavery was legal, the status of slavery was reattached to him and therefore he had no standing before the court. The case was brought before the federal circuit court, which took jurisdiction, but held against Scott.
The case was taken on appeal to the Supreme Court, where it was argued at length in 1855 and 1856 and finally decided in 1857. The decision handed down by a majority of the vote of the court was that there was no power in the in the existing form of government to make citizens slave or free, ! and at the time of the formation of the US Constitution they were not and could not be citizens of the United States in any of the states. Scott was ruled still to be a slave, and not a citizen of Missouri or any US state for that matter, from which it followed that he had no right to sue in the federal courts. Now it was not so much the court's decision that was so damaging, but the series of opinions that Roger Taney, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and how we look at it. The court had announced its decision on March 6, 1857.
By a 7 - 2 vote, the court ruled against Scott. Of the seven opinions written by the members of the majority, Chief Justice Taney's is considered to present the forma; view of the Court, and I think that these are the most damaging statements in the case. Taney first dealt with the issues of whether Dredd Scott or any slave or descendant of slaves could be a slave s could be a citizen under the US constitution. It was Taney's opinion as the! majority of the court that: "they (slaves) are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word "citizen" in the US constitution, and can, therefore, claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. " Taney drew this conclusion from an examination of historical practices and the intent of the Framers of the Constitution. "Slaves, " he said, " had more than a century before the Constitution came into existence been regarded as being of an inferior order, and all together unfit to associate with the white race, in social or political relations; and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the Negro may justify and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit...
this opinion at that time was fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race. " Even the words "all men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence did not adhere to the black race, as Taney spoke of those authors, "the authors of that declaration perfectly understood the meaning of the language that they used, and how it would be understood by others; and they knew that it would not, in any part of the civilized would, be supposed to ever! ace the Negro race, which by common consent, had been excluded by centralized governments and the family of nations, and doomed to slavery. " Taney even went to the extent of pronouncing Negroes as only property, nothing more. "The unhappy black race were separated from the whites by indelible marks, and laws long before established, and were never thought of or spoken of except as property, and when the claims of the owner or the profit of the trader was supposed to need protection. After releasing so many damaging statements, Taney still felt it necessary to discuss whether Scott's residence in Wisconsin Territory made him a free man. Taney, noting the Fifth Amendment providing that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or the property without due process of law, concluded that, "an Act of Congress, which deprives a citizen...
of his liberty or property into a particular Territory of the United States, and who had committed no offense against the laws, could hardly be dignified with the name due process of law. " Therefore, Taney said, the portion of the Missouri Compromise that prohibited slavery in th! e Northern portion of the Louisiana Purchase was void and Dredd Scott had not been freed by his residence in Illinois. Taney said that, "because Scott was a slave when taken into the state of Illinois by his owner, and was there held as such, and brought back in that character, his status, as free or slave depended on that of Missouri, not Illinois. " The word of this courts opinion on slaves and their citizenship spread across the land at an incredible rate, educing great criticism by newspapers and abolitionist. The ruling and the opinions stated in the case fueled the controversy over slavery, and is believed to have caused so much anger between the North and the South, to be one of the causes of the Civil War. Beside this, the Court was believed to have taken the biggest impact itself. An editorial in the North American Review in October 1857 stated, "The country will feel the consequences of this decision more deeply and more permanently in the loss of confidence!
in the sound judicial integrity and strictly legal character of their tribunals, than in anything beside; and this, perhaps, may well be accounted the greatest political calamity which this country, under our forms of government, could sustain. In another case that the Taney court handled, Charles River Bridge versus Warren Bridge in 1837 bundled together a remarkable array of constitutional questions including the power of a state legislature to control economic development, the place of monopolies in American economic life, the impact of technological changed on the law and the role of the Supreme Court in supervising state public policy. The case involved the Proprietors of Charles River Bridge filing a bill against the Warren Bridge Company for building a bridge identical to theirs and in the same place as theirs. The Charles River Bridge was chartered by the Massachusetts legislature, giving it the power to collect tolls, but saying nothing about an exclusive right to carry traffic over the Charles River. A generation later, responding to the need of increased traffic carrying capacity between Boston and its northern territory, the legislature chartered another bridge, which was eventually to become a free b! ridge, thus destroying the value of the original bridges character.
This bridge, the Warren bridge, would be taking away t...
Free research essays on topics related to: citizens of the united states, supreme court, chief justice, missouri compromise, due process of law
Research essay sample on Due Process Of Law Citizens Of The United States
