Supreme Court Cases Involving Slaves Research Paper

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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.

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Lastly, the Supreme Court case pointed to the Missouri Compromise. Apparently, there were provisions in that case that were voided as they exceeded the powers of Congress. The specific clause that was seen as being in conflict was that there was a provision to exclude slavery and give freedom to non-white persons in the area that made up the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase. In a nutshell, the case asserted that blacks had no standing or right to demand freedom or citizenship. By extension, this negated their ability, at least according to the decision, to bring any sort of case up in federal court. This by itself ostensibly nullified Scott's case on its face as he was deemed to have no right to do so given his status as a black man. In one fail swoop, any legal chance for Scott and the important parts of the Missouri Compromise were struck down at the same time (PBS, 2016).

The decision was extremely controversial as it seemed to directly violate more than one clause of the Constitution. The main one that was pointed to by most people was within the Fifth Amendment where it stated that people born in the United States were de facto citizens with no other legal intervention or procedure needed to finalize that. Scott would later gain his freedom. However, it was only because his then-owner did so of his own volition. Tragically, Dred Scott died of tuberculosis less than two years later. However, his wife would survive beyond his death for roughly a generation and she died about ten years after the abolition of slavery via the Emancipation Proclamation during the Civil War in the 1860's (PBS, 2016).

In addition to the Emancipation Proclamation, there were a number of legal and other reactions that were obviously meant to stomp out the dirty legacy of how the Dred Scott decision played out. Despite the 7-2 nature of the Dred Scott decision, there were two different dissents by the two judges that were not with the majority and there were other things to come. There was, of course, the American Civil War and its after-effects. These effects included the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Subsequent to that, there was the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. That amendment rectified one of the major problems with the Dred Scott decision and the other associated laws cited before and extended full citizenship to African-Americans even though the Constitution itself and other laws seemingly had already done that (PBS, 2016).

To state the obvious, Taney's decision was a very questionable one. It emerged later on that Taney believed that it was the best and most thorough way to make the peace politically. Indeed, there was the prevailing law that there were slave states and there were free states and that this alone should be the guiding light. However, Taney's decision did the exact opposite and predictably so. Taney's legacy was tarnished from that point on and it remains that way. A recent article in The Atlantic refers to Taney as the "Leviathan of Slavery." He has also been tarred as being a judge that was clearly partisan and ill-equipped to do his job. As noted before, the state decision rolled back a significant amount of precedent but the Supreme Court decision did much the same thing. Indeed, the "once free, forever free" motto was accepted at the federal level and this was actively conflicted by the Dred Scott decision. Also as noted before, the decision as issued by Taney actively ignored what was in the founding documents of the United States. It could not be explained how the Constitution could say one thing but that the enforced doctrine and law when it came to black men was entirely different. It begs the question why the amendments regarding women and blacks were needed given that the founding documents of the country would seem to address the issue on their own. In any event, those amendments happened and made it crystal clear that no further suppression of blacks or women would be allowed for or legal (Ellis, 1865).

If there is one thing that can stated with certitude, it would be that the Dred Scott case just further burned in the lines that existed between those that thought slavery was all fine and good and those that would not stand for it. It is vexing….....

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