View source for Dred Scott v. Sandford

{{Short description|1857 U.S. Supreme Court case on the citizenship of African-Americans}}
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{{Use American English|date=June 2025}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=June 2025}}

{{Infobox SCOTUS case
| Litigants = Dred Scott v. Sandford
| ArgueDateA = February 11
| ArgueDateB = 14
| ArgueYear = 1856
| ReargueDateA = December 15
| ReargueDateB = 18
| ReargueYear = 1856
| DecideDate = March 6
| DecideYear = 1857
| FullName = [[Dred Scott]] v. [[John F. A. Sanford|Sandford]]{{Efn|name=a|The defendant's surname was actually "Sanford". A Supreme Court [[Court clerk|clerk of court]] misspelled it as "Sandford" in 1856 and the error was never corrected.{{sfnp|Vishneski|1988|loc=p. 373, note 1}}}}
| ParallelCitations = 19 [[Benjamin Chew Howard|How.]] 393; 15 [[L. Ed.]] 691; 1856 [[Westlaw|WL]] 8721; 1856 [[U.S. LEXIS]] 472
| Docket =
| USVol = 60
| USPage = 393
| OralArgument =
| OralReargument =
| OpinionAnnouncement =
| Opinion = https://cdn.loc.gov/service/ll/usrep/usrep060/usrep060393a/usrep060393a.pdf
| Prior = Judgment for defendant, [[United States circuit court|C.C.D. Mo.]]
| Subsequent =
| Holding = Judgment reversed and suit dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. {{ordered list |style=text-align: left;
    |1=Persons of African descent cannot be and were never intended to be citizens under the U.S. Constitution. Plaintiff is without [[Standing (law)|standing]] to file a suit.
    |2=The [[Property Clause]] is applicable only to lands possessed at the time of the Constitution's ratification (1787). As such, Congress cannot ban slavery in the territories. The [[Missouri Compromise]] is unconstitutional.
    |3=The [[Due Process Clause]] of the [[Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fifth Amendment]] prohibits the federal government from freeing slaves brought into federal territories.
    }}
| Majority = [[s:Dred Scott v. Sandford/Opinion of the Court|Taney]]
| JoinMajority = Wayne, Catron, Daniel, Nelson, Grier, Campbell
| Concurrence = [[s:Dred Scott v. Sandford/Concurrence Wayne|Wayne]]
| JoinConcurrence =
| Concurrence2 = [[s:Dred Scott v. Sandford/Separate Catron|Catron]]
| JoinConcurrence2 =
| Concurrence3 = [[s:Dred Scott v. Sandford/Separate Daniel|Daniel]]
| Concurrence4 = [[s:Dred Scott v. Sandford/Separate Nelson|Nelson]]
| JoinConcurrence4 = Grier
| Concurrence5 = [[s:Dred Scott v. Sandford/Separate Grier|Grier]]
| Concurrence6 = [[s:Dred Scott v. Sandford/Concurrence Campbell|Campbell]]
| Concurrence/Dissent =
| JoinConcurrence/Dissent =
| Dissent = [[s:Dred Scott v. Sandford/Dissent McLean|McLean]]
| JoinDissent =
| Dissent2 = [[s:Dred Scott v. Sandford/Dissent Curtis|Curtis]]
| JoinDissent2 =
| LawsApplied = [[Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution|U.S. Const. amend. V]]; [[Article Four of the United States Constitution|U.S. Const. art. IV]], § 3, cl. 2; [[Missouri Compromise]]
| Superseded = [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|U.S. Const. amends. XIII]], [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|XIV]], [[Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|XV]]
| Overruled =
}}
'''''Dred Scott v. Sandford''''',{{Efn|name=a}} 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857), was a [[List of landmark court decisions in the United States|landmark decision]] of the [[Supreme Court of the United States|United States Supreme Court]] that held the [[Constitution of the United States|United States Constitution]] did not extend [[Citizenship of the United States|American citizenship]] to people of [[African Americans|black African descent]], and therefore they could not enjoy the rights and [[Privileges and Immunities Clause|privileges]] the Constitution conferred upon American citizens.{{sfnp|Chemerinsky|2019|p=722}}{{sfnp|Nowak|Rotunda|2012|loc=§18.6}} The decision is widely considered the worst in the Supreme Court's history, widely denounced for its overt [[racism]], [[judicial activism]], and poor legal reasoning. It ''de jure'' nationalized slavery,<ref>{{Cite web |last=Reed |first=Rachel |title=Can birthright citizenship be changed? |url=https://hls.harvard.edu/today/can-birthright-citizenship-be-changed/ |access-date=2025-04-18 |website=Harvard Law School |language=en-us}}</ref> and thus played a crucial role in the events that led to the [[American Civil War]] four years later.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hall |first=Kermit |title=Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=1992 |isbn=9780195176612 |pages=889 |quote=American legal and constitutional scholars consider the Dred Scott decision to be the worst ever rendered by the Supreme Court. Historians have abundantly documented its role in crystallizing attitudes that led to war. Taney's opinion stands as a model of censurable judicial craft and failed judicial statesmanship. |author-link=Kermit L. Hall}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Urofsky |first=Melvin |author-link=Melvin I. Urofsky |date=January 5, 2023 |title=Dred Scott decision {{!}} Definition, History, Summary, Significance, & Facts {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/event/Dred-Scott-decision |access-date=2023-02-03 |website=[[Encyclopædia Britannica]] |quote=Among constitutional scholars, Scott v. Sandford is widely considered the worst decision ever rendered by the Supreme Court. It has been cited in particular as the most egregious example in the court’s history of wrongly imposing a judicial solution on a political problem. A later chief justice, Charles Evans Hughes, famously characterized the decision as the court’s great “self-inflicted wound.”}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=13 Worst Supreme Court Decisions of All Time |url=https://blogs.findlaw.com/supreme_court/2015/10/13-worst-supreme-court-decisions-of-all-time.html |author=Staff |work=[[FindLaw]] |date=October 14, 2015 |access-date=June 10, 2021}}</ref> Legal scholar Bernard Schwartz said that it "stands first in any list of the worst Supreme Court decisions." Chief Justice [[Charles Evans Hughes]] called it the Court's "greatest self-inflicted wound".<ref>{{cite book |author=Bernard Schwartz |title=A Book of Legal Lists: The Best and Worst in American Law |url=https://archive.org/details/bookoflegallists0000schw |url-access=registration |year=1997 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |page=[https://archive.org/details/bookoflegallists0000schw/page/70 70]|isbn=978-0198026945 }}</ref>
	
The decision involved the case of [[Dred Scott]], an enslaved black man whose owners had taken him from [[Missouri]], a [[History of slavery in Missouri|slave-holding state]], into [[Illinois]] and the [[Wisconsin Territory]], where slavery was illegal. When his owners later brought him back to Missouri, Scott sued for his freedom and claimed that because he had been taken into "[[Slave states and free states|free]]" U.S. territory, he had automatically been freed and was legally no longer a slave. Scott sued first in Missouri state court, which ruled that he was still a slave under its law. He then sued in [[Federal judiciary of the United States|U.S. federal court]], which ruled against him by deciding that it had to apply Missouri law to the case. He then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In March 1857, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision against Scott. In an opinion written by [[Chief Justice of the United States|Chief Justice]] [[Roger B. Taney]], the Court ruled that people of African descent "are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States"; more specifically, that African Americans were not entitled to "full liberty of speech{{nbsp}}... to hold public meetings{{nbsp}}... and to keep and carry arms" along with other constitutionally protected rights and privileges.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2021-07-27 |title=Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) |url=https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/dred-scott-v-sandford |access-date=2023-11-27 |website=National Archives}}</ref> Taney supported his ruling with an extended survey of American state and local laws from the time of the [[Constitutional Convention (United States)|Constitution's drafting]] in 1787 that purported to show that a "perpetual and impassable barrier was intended to be erected between the white race and the one which they had reduced to slavery." Because the Court ruled that Scott was not an American citizen, he was also not a citizen of any state and, accordingly, could never establish the "[[Diversity jurisdiction|diversity of citizenship]]" that [[Article III of the United States Constitution|Article III of the U.S. Constitution]] requires for a U.S. federal court to be able to exercise jurisdiction over a case.{{sfnp|Chemerinsky|2019|p=722}} After ruling on those issues surrounding Scott, Taney struck down the [[Missouri Compromise]] because, by prohibiting slavery in U.S. territories north of the 36°30′ parallel, it interfered with slave owners' property rights under the [[Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution]].

Although Taney and several [[Taney Court#Membership|other justices]] hoped the decision would settle the slavery controversy, which was increasingly dividing the American public, the decision only exacerbated interstate tension.{{sfnp|Chemerinsky|2019|p=723}} Taney's majority opinion suited the slaveholding states, but was intensely decried in all the other states.{{sfnp|Nowak|Rotunda|2012|loc=§18.6}} The decision inflamed the national debate over slavery and deepened the divide that led ultimately to the [[American Civil War]]. In 1865, after the [[Union (American Civil War)|Union]]'s victory, the Court's ruling in ''Dred Scott'' was superseded by passage of the [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution]], which outlawed slavery, and by Congress with the Civil Rights Act of 1866 conferring full Citizenship and equal rights flowing from it.  After southern lawyers and courts countermanded this federal law with state law, Congress and 3/4 of the States in 1868  constitutionalized the 1866 Act [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fourteenth Amendment]], whose first section guaranteed citizenship for "[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof." 

Historians agree that the Court decision was a major disaster for the nation as it dramatically inflamed tensions leading to the Civil War.<ref name=Carrafiello-A>{{Cite journal |last=Carrafiello |first=Michael L. |date=Spring 2010 |title=Diplomatic Failure: James Buchanan's Inaugural Address |url=https://journals.psu.edu/phj/article/view/59920/59737 |journal=Pennsylvania History |volume=77 |issue=2 |pages=145–165 |doi=10.5325/pennhistory.77.2.0145 |jstor=10.5325/pennhistory.77.2.0145|url-access=subscription |doi-access=free }}</ref><ref>Gregory J. Wallance, "The Lawsuit That Started the Civil War." ''Civil War Times'' 45: 46–52. </ref><ref>Roberta Alexander, "Dred Scott: The decision that sparked a civil war." ''Northern Kentucky Law Review'' 34 (2007): 643+ [https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/nkenlr34&div=32&id=&page= excerpt]. </ref> The ruling is widely considered to have had the intent of bringing [[Finality (law)|finality]] to the [[Slavery in the United States|territorial crisis]] resulting from the [[Louisiana Purchase]] by creating a constitutional right to own slaves anywhere in the country, while permanently [[Disenfranchisement|disenfranchising]] all people of African descent, in an act generally believed to constitute blatant judicial activism.<ref>{{Cite web |title=What defines judicial activism? Not being an activist, says Kermit Roosevelt |url=https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/what-defines-judicial-activism-not-being-activist-says-kermit-roosevelt |access-date=2023-01-09 |website=Penn Today |date=July 15, 2022}}</ref> Often cited in proof of this is the court's decision to go out of its way to overturn the [[Missouri Compromise]], which had already been replaced with the [[Kansas–Nebraska Act]] and thus was a legally [[Mootness|moot]] issue, because the latter act was determined by the [[due process]] of [[Popular sovereignty in the United States|popular sovereignty]], and thus could not be overturned the same way as the Missouri Compromise.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2007-03-19 |title="No Rights Which the White Man was Bound to Respect": The Dred Scott Decision {{!}} ACS |url=https://www.acslaw.org/expertforum/no-rights-which-the-white-man-was-bound-to-respect/ |access-date=2023-01-09}}</ref> During the [[1860 United States elections|United States election of 1860]], [[Republican Party (United States)|Republicans]] rejected the ruling as being [[Partisan (politics)|corrupted by partisanship]] and [[Non-binding resolution|non-binding]] because the court had no [[jurisdiction]]. Their presidential nominee, [[Abraham Lincoln]], stated he would not permit slavery anywhere in the country except where it already existed, which directly contradicted the court's ruling. His election is considered the final event that led the Southern states to secede from the [[Union (American Civil War)|Union]], igniting the Civil War.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780739137604/Dred-Scott-and-the-Dangers-of-a-Political-Court |title=Dred Scott and the Dangers of a Political Court}}</ref>

==Background==
===Political setting===
[[File:USA Territorial Growth 1820 alt cropped.jpg|thumb|upright=1.75|The [[Missouri Compromise]] created the slave-holding state Missouri (''Mo.'', yellow) but prohibited slavery in the rest of the former Louisiana Territory (here, marked ''Missouri Territory 1812'', green) north of latitude 36°30' North.  Modern state boundaries are also shown.]]

In the late 1810s, a major political dispute arose over the creation of new [[U.S. state]]s from the vast territory the United States had acquired from France in 1803 by the [[Louisiana Purchase]].{{sfnp|Chemerinsky|2019|loc=§&nbsp;9.3.1, p. 750}} The dispute centered on whether the new states would be "free" states in which slavery would be illegal, as in the Northern states, or whether they would be "slave" states in which slavery would be legal, as in the Southern states.{{sfnp|Chemerinsky|2019|loc=§&nbsp;9.3.1, p. 750}} 

In 1820, the [[16th United States Congress|U.S. Congress]] passed legislation known as the "[[Missouri Compromise]]" that was intended to resolve the dispute. The Compromise first admitted [[Maine]] into the Union as a free state, then created [[Missouri]] out of a portion of the Louisiana Purchase territory and admitted it as a slave state; it also prohibited slavery in the area north of the [[parallel 36°30′ north]], where most of the territory lay.{{sfnp|Chemerinsky|2019|loc=§&nbsp;9.3.1, p. 750}} The legal effects of a slaveowner taking his slaves from Missouri into the free territory north of latitude 36°30′ north, as well as the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise itself, eventually came to a head in the ''Dred Scott'' case.{{citation needed|date = June 2025}}

===Dred Scott and John Emerson===
{{main|Dred Scott}}
[[File:Oil on Canvas Portrait of Dred Scott (cropped).jpg|thumb|Dred Scott]]
[[Dred Scott]] was born a [[History of slavery in Virginia|slave in Virginia]] around 1799.<ref>{{Britannica |958552 |Dred Scott |Melvin I. Urofsky}}</ref> Little is known of his early years.<ref>Earl M. Maltz, ''Dred Scott and the Politics of Slavery'' (2007)</ref> His owner, Peter Blow, moved to [[Alabama]] in 1818, taking his six slaves along to work a farm near [[Huntsville, Alabama|Huntsville]]. In 1830, Blow gave up farming and settled in [[St. Louis, Missouri]], where he sold Scott to U.S. Army surgeon Dr. John Emerson.<ref name="Missouri Digital Heritage">{{cite web|title=Missouri's Dred Scott Case, 1846–1857|url=https://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/resources/africanamerican/scott/scott.asp|website=Missouri Digital Heritage: African American History Initiative|access-date=July 15, 2015}}</ref> After purchasing Scott, Emerson took him to [[Fort Armstrong, Illinois|Fort Armstrong]] in Illinois. A [[Free state (United States)|free state]], Illinois had been free as a territory under the [[Northwest Ordinance]] of 1787 and had prohibited slavery in [[Constitution of Illinois|its constitution]] in 1819 when it was admitted as a state.

In 1836, Emerson moved with Scott from Illinois to [[Fort Snelling]] in the [[Wisconsin territory]] in what has become the state of [[Minnesota]]. Slavery in the Wisconsin Territory (some of which, including Fort Snelling, was part of the Louisiana Purchase) was prohibited by the U.S. Congress under the Missouri Compromise. During his stay at Fort Snelling, Scott married [[Harriet Robinson Scott|Harriet Robinson]] in a civil ceremony by Harriet's owner, Major Lawrence Taliaferro, a justice of the peace who was also an [[Indian agent]]. The ceremony would have been unnecessary had Dred Scott been a slave, as slave marriages had no recognition in the law.{{sfnp|Finkelman|2007}}<ref name="Missouri Digital Heritage"/>

In 1837, the army ordered Emerson to [[Jefferson Barracks|Jefferson Barracks Military Post]], south of St. Louis. Emerson left Scott and his wife at Fort Snelling, where he leased their services out for profit. By hiring Scott out in a free state, Emerson was effectively bringing the institution of slavery into a free state, which was a direct violation of the Missouri Compromise, the Northwest Ordinance, and the Wisconsin Enabling Act.{{sfnp|Finkelman|2007}}

==== Irene Sanford Emerson ====
Before the end of the year, the army reassigned Emerson to [[Fort Jesup]] in [[Louisiana]], where Emerson married Eliza Irene Sanford in February 1838. Emerson sent for Scott and Harriet, who proceeded to Louisiana to serve their master and his wife. Within months, Emerson was transferred back to Fort Snelling. While en route to Fort Snelling, Scott's daughter Eliza was born on a steamboat under way on the Mississippi River between Illinois and what would become Iowa. Because Eliza was born in free territory, she was technically born as a free person under both federal and state laws. Upon entering Louisiana, the Scotts could have sued for their freedom, but did not. One scholar suggests that, in all likelihood, the Scotts would have been granted their freedom by a Louisiana court, as it had respected laws of free states that slaveholders forfeited their right to slaves if they brought them in for extended periods. This had been the holding in Louisiana state courts for more than 20 years.{{sfnp|Finkelman|2007}}

Toward the end of 1838, the army reassigned Emerson back to Fort Snelling. By 1840, Emerson's wife Irene returned to St. Louis with their slaves, while Dr. Emerson served in the [[Seminole War]]. While in St. Louis, she hired them out. In 1842, Emerson left the army. After he died in the Iowa Territory in 1843, his widow Irene inherited his estate, including the Scotts. For three years after John Emerson's death, she continued to lease out the Scotts as hired slaves. In 1846, Scott [[Manumission#United States|attempted to purchase]] his and his family's freedom, but Irene Emerson refused, prompting Scott to resort to legal recourse.<ref name="Fehrenbacher 2001">Don E. Fehrenbacher, ''The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics'' (2001)</ref>

==Procedural history==
=== ''Scott v. Emerson'' ===

==== First state circuit court trial ====
{{Events leading to US Civil War}}Having been unsuccessful in his attempt to purchase his freedom, Dred Scott, with the help of his legal advisers, sued Emerson for his freedom in the Circuit Court of St. Louis County on April 6, 1846.<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=36}} [[Harriet Robinson Scott#Separate lawsuits|A separate petition was filed for his wife Harriet]], making them the first married couple to file [[freedom suit]]s in tandem in its 50-year history.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=VanderVelde |first=Lea |url=https://archive.org/details/mrsdredscottlife00vand_0/page/232/mode/2up |title=Mrs. Dred Scott: A Life on Slavery's Frontier |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2009 |isbn=978-0195366563}}</ref>{{Rp|page=232}} They received financial assistance from the family of Dred's previous owner, Peter Blow.{{sfnp|Finkelman|2007}} Blow's daughter [[Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless|Charlotte]] was married to Joseph Charless, an officer at the Bank of Missouri. Charless signed legal documents as security for the Scotts and later secured the services of the bank's attorney, [[Samuel M. Bay|Samuel Mansfield Bay]], for the trial.<ref name="Missouri Digital Heritage"/>

It was expected that the Scotts would win their freedom with relative ease.{{sfnp|Finkelman|2007}}<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|page=241}} By 1846, dozens of freedom suits had been won in Missouri by former slaves.<ref name=":2" /> Most had claimed their legal right to freedom on the basis that they, or their mothers, had previously lived in free states or territories.<ref name=":2" /> Among the most important legal precedents were ''[[Winny v. Whitesides]]''<ref>1 Mo. 472, 475 (Mo. 1824).</ref> and ''[[Rachel v. Walker]].''<ref>4 Mo. 350 (Mo. 1836).</ref> In ''Winny v. Whitesides'', the Missouri Supreme Court had ruled in 1824 that a person who had been held as a slave in Illinois, where slavery was illegal, and then brought to Missouri, was free by virtue of residence in a free state.<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=41}} In ''Rachel v. Walker'', the state supreme court had ruled that a U.S. Army officer who took a slave to a military post in a territory where slavery was prohibited and retained her there for several years, had thereby "forfeit[ed] his property".<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=42}} Rachel, like Dred Scott, had accompanied her enslaver to Fort Snelling.<ref name=":0" />

Scott was represented by three different lawyers from the filing of the original petition to the time of the actual trial, over one year later. The first was [[Francis B. Murdoch]], a prolific freedom suit attorney who abruptly left St. Louis.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Gardner |first=Eric |date=Spring 2007 |title='You Have No Business to Whip Me': The Freedom Suits of Polly Wash and Lucy Ann Delaney |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40033764 |journal=African American Review |volume=41 |issue=1 |pages=40, 47 |jstor=40033764}}</ref><ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=38}} Murdoch was replaced by Charles D. Drake, an in-law of the Blow family.<ref name=":0" /> When Drake also left the state, [[Samuel M. Bay]] took over as the Scotts' lawyer.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=They Have No Rights: Dred Scott's Struggle for Freedom|last=Ehrlich|first=Walter|publisher=Applewood Books|year=2007}}</ref> Irene Emerson was represented by George W. Goode, a proslavery lawyer from Virginia.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Fehrenbacher |first=Don Edward |url=https://archive.org/details/slaverylawpoliti0000fehr/page/n3/mode/2up |title=Slavery, Law and Politics: The Dred Scott Case in Historical Perspective |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1981 |isbn=0195028821 |location=New York}}</ref>{{Rp|page=130}} By the time the case went to trial, it had been reassigned from Judge [[John Krum|John M. Krum]], who was proslavery, to Judge Alexander Hamilton, who was known to be sympathetic to freedom suits.<ref name="Missouri Digital Heritage" />

''Dred Scott v. Irene Emerson'' finally went to trial for the first time on June 30, 1847.<ref name=":1" />{{Rp|page=130}} Henry Peter Blow testified in court that his father had owned Dred and sold him to John Emerson.<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=44}} The fact that Scott had been taken to live on free soil was clearly established through depositions from witnesses who had known Scott and Dr. Emerson at Fort Armstrong and Fort Snelling.<ref name=":1" />{{Rp|pages=130–131}} Grocer Samuel Russell testified that he had hired the Scotts from Irene Emerson and paid her father, Alexander Sanford, for their services.<ref name=":1" /> Upon cross-examination, however, Russell admitted that the leasing arrangements had actually been made by his wife, Adeline.<ref name=":1" />

Thus, Russell's testimony was ruled [[hearsay]], and the jury returned a verdict for Emerson.<ref name="Missouri Digital Heritage" /> This created a seemingly contradictory outcome in which Scott was ordered by the court to remain Irene Emerson's slave, because he had been unable to prove that he was previously Irene Emerson's slave.<ref name="Missouri Digital Heritage" />

==== First state supreme court appeal ====
Bay moved immediately for a new trial on the basis that Scott's case had been lost due to a technicality that could be rectified, rather than because of the facts.<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=47}} Judge Hamilton finally issued the order for a new trial on December 2, 1847.<ref name=":0" /> Two days later, Emerson's lawyer objected to a new trial by filing a bill of exceptions.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" />{{Rp|page=131}} The case was then taken on [[Appeal|writ of error]] to the [[Supreme Court of Missouri]].<ref name="Missouri Digital Heritage" /> Scott's new lawyers, [[Alexander Pope Field|Alexander P. Field]] and David N. Hall, argued that the writ of error was inappropriate because the lower court had not yet issued a final judgment.<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=50}} The state supreme court agreed unanimously with their position and dismissed Emerson's appeal on June 30, 1848.<ref name=":0" /> The main issue before the court at this stage was procedural and no substantive issues were discussed.<ref name=":0" />

==== Second state circuit court trial ====
Before the state supreme court had convened, Goode had presented a motion on behalf of Emerson to have Scott taken into custody and hired out.<ref name=":1" /> On March 17, 1848, Judge Hamilton issued the order to the St. Louis County sheriff.<ref name=":0" />{{Efn|Legal historian Walter Ehrlich implies that the custody order applied only to Dred Scott, while Don Fehrenbacher suggests that it applied to both Dred and Harriet.}} Anyone hiring Scott had to post a bond of six hundred dollars.<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=49}} Wages he earned during that time were placed in [[escrow]], to be paid to the party that prevailed in the lawsuit.<ref name=":0" /> Scott would remain in the sheriff's custody or hired out by him until March 18, 1857.<ref name=":0" /> One of Scott's lawyers, David N. Hall, hired him starting March 17, 1849.<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|page=261}}

The [[St. Louis Fire of 1849]], a [[1846–1860 cholera pandemic#1840s|cholera epidemic]], and two [[continuance]]s delayed the retrial in the St. Louis Circuit Court until January 12, 1850.<ref name="Missouri Digital Heritage" /><ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=51}} Irene Emerson was now defended by [[Hugh A. Garland]] and [[Lyman Decatur Norris]], while Scott was represented by Field and Hall.<ref name=":0" /> Judge Alexander Hamilton was presiding.<ref name="Missouri Digital Heritage" /> The proceedings were similar to the first trial.<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=52}} The same depositions from Catherine A. Anderson and Miles H. Clark were used to establish that Dr. Emerson had taken Scott to free territory.<ref name=":0" />

This time, the hearsay problem was surmounted by a deposition from Adeline Russell stating that she had hired the Scotts from Irene Emerson, thereby proving that Emerson claimed them as her slaves.<ref name=":0" /> Samuel Russell testified in court once again that he had paid for their services.<ref name=":0" /> The defense then changed strategy and argued in their summation that Mrs. Emerson had every right to hire out Dred Scott, because he had lived with Dr. Emerson at Fort Armstrong and Fort Snelling under military jurisdiction, not under civil law.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" />{{Rp|page=132}} In doing so, the defense ignored the precedent set by ''Rachel v. Walker.''<ref name=":1" /> In his rebuttal, Hall stated that the fact that they were military posts did not matter, and pointed out that Dr. Emerson had left Scott behind at Fort Snelling, hired out to others, after being reassigned to a new post.<ref name=":4">{{Cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.44028/page/n269/mode/2up |title=American State Trials |publisher=Thomas Law Book Company |year=1921 |editor-last=Lawson |editor-first=John |volume=13 |location=St. Louis |pages=237–238}}</ref>

The jury quickly returned a verdict in favor of Dred Scott, nominally making him a free man.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=53}} Judge Hamilton declared Harriet, Eliza and Lizzie Scott to be free as well.<ref name=":0" /> Garland moved immediately for a new trial, and was overruled.<ref name=":4" /><ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=55}} On February 13, 1850, Emerson's defense filed a bill of exceptions, which was certified by Judge Hamilton, setting into motion another appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court.<ref name=":0" /> Counsel for the opposing sides signed an agreement that moving forward, only ''Dred Scott v. Irene Emerson'' would be advanced, and that any decision made by the high court would apply to Harriet's suit, also.<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=43}} In 1849 or 1850, Irene Emerson left St. Louis and moved to [[Springfield, Massachusetts]].<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=55}} Her brother, [[John F. A. Sanford]], continued looking after her business interests when she left,<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Finkelman |first=Paul |date=December 2006 |title=Scott v. Sandford: The Court's Most Dreadful Case and How It Changed History |url=https://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/cklawreview/vol82/iss1/2 |journal=Chicago-Kent Law Review |volume=82 |issue=1 |page=25 |via=Scholarly Commons @ IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law}}</ref> and her departure had no impact on the case.<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=56}}

==== Second state supreme court appeal ====
Both parties filed briefs with the Supreme Court of Missouri on March 8, 1850.<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=57}} A busy docket delayed consideration of the case until the October term.<ref name=":1" />{{Rp|page=133}} By then, the issue of slavery had become politically charged, even within the judiciary.<ref name=":3">{{Cite journal |last=Boman |first=Dennis K. |date=2000 |title=The Dred Scott Case Reconsidered: The Legal and Political Context in Missouri |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3113785 |journal=American Journal of Legal History |volume=44 |issue=4 |pages=421, 423–424, 426 |doi=10.2307/3113785 |jstor=3113785|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref name=":1" />{{Rp|page=134}} Although the Missouri Supreme Court had not yet overturned precedent in freedom suits, in the 1840s, the court's proslavery justices had explicitly stated their opposition to freeing slaves.<ref name=":3" /> After the court convened on October 25, 1850, the two justices who were proslavery anti-Benton Democrats – [[William Barclay Napton]] and [[James Harvey Birch]] – persuaded [[John Ferguson Ryland]], a [[Thomas Hart Benton (politician)|Benton Democrat]], to join them in a unanimous decision that Dred Scott remained a slave under Missouri law.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=60}} However, Judge Napton delayed writing the court's opinion for months. Then in August 1851, both Napton and Birch lost their seats in the Missouri Supreme Court, following the state's first supreme court election, with only Ryland remaining as an incumbent. The case thus needed to be considered again by the newly elected court.<ref name=":1" />{{Rp|page=135}} The reorganized Missouri Supreme Court now included two moderates – [[Hamilton Rowan Gamble|Hamilton Gamble]] and John Ryland – and one staunch proslavery justice, [[William Scott (Missouri judge)|William Scott]].<ref name=":3" />

David N. Hall had prepared the brief for Dred Scott but died in March 1851.<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|pages=57, 61}} Alexander P. Field continued alone as counsel for Dred Scott, and resubmitted the same briefs from 1850 for both sides. On November 29, 1851, the case was taken under consideration, on written briefs alone, and a decision was reached.<ref name=":0" /> However, before Judge Scott could write the court's opinion, Lyman Norris, co-counsel for Irene Emerson, obtained permission to submit a new brief he had been preparing, to replace the original one submitted by Garland.<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=56, 61}}

Norris's brief has been characterized as "a sweeping denunciation of the authority of both the [Northwest] Ordinance of 1787 and the Missouri Compromise."<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=62}} Although he stopped short of questioning their constitutionality, Norris questioned their applicability and criticized the early Missouri Supreme Court, ridiculing former Justice [[George Tompkins]] as "the great apostle of freedom at that day."<ref name=":3" /><ref name=":0" /> 

Reviewing the court's past decisions on freedom suits, Norris acknowledged that if ''Rachel v. Walker'' was allowed to stand, his client would lose.<ref name=":3" /> Norris then challenged the concept of "once free, always free", and asserted that the court under Tompkins had been wrong to rule that the Ordinance of 1787 remained in force after the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1788.<ref name=":3" /> Finally, he argued that the Missouri Compromise should be disregarded whenever it interfered with Missouri law, and that the laws of other states should not be enforced, if their enforcement would cause Missouri citizens to lose their property.<ref name=":3" /> In support of his argument, he cited Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's opinion in the United States Supreme Court case ''[[Strader v. Graham]]'', which argued that the status of a slave returning from a free state must be determined by the slave state itself.<ref name=":3" /><ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=63}} According to historian Walter Ehrlich, the closing of Norris's brief was "a racist harangue that not only revealed the prejudices of its author, but also indicated how the ''Dred Scott'' case had become a vehicle for the expression of such views".<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=63}} Noting that Norris's proslavery "doctrines" were later incorporated into the court's final decision,<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=62}} Ehrlich writes (emphasis his):<blockquote>''From this point on, the'' Dred Scott ''case clearly changed from a genuine freedom suit to the controversial political issue for which it became infamous in American history.''<ref name=":0" /></blockquote>On March 22, 1852, Judge William Scott announced the decision of the Missouri Supreme Court that Dred Scott remained a slave, and ordered the trial court's judgment to be reversed.<ref name=":1" />{{Rp|page=137}} Judge Ryland concurred, while Chief Justice Hamilton Gamble dissented.<ref name=":3" /> The majority opinion written by Judge Scott focused on the issue of [[comity]] or [[Conflict of laws in the United States|conflict of laws]],<ref name=":1" /> and relied on [[states' rights]] rhetoric:<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=65}}<blockquote>Every State has the right of determining how far, in a spirit of comity, it will respect the laws of other States. Those laws have no intrinsic right to be enforced beyond the limits of the State for which they were enacted. The respect allowed them will depend altogether on their conformity to the policy of our institutions. No State is bound to carry into effect enactments conceived in a spirit hostile to that which pervades her own laws.<ref name=":5">{{cite web |title=Scott v. Emerson, 15 Mo. 576 (1852) |url=https://cite.case.law/mo/15/576/ |access-date=2022-04-01 |website=Caselaw Access Project, Harvard Law School}}</ref></blockquote>Judge Scott did not deny the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise and acknowledged that its prohibition of slavery was "absolute", but only within the specified territory. Thus, a slave crossing the border could obtain his freedom, but only within the court of the free state.<ref name=":0" /> Rejecting the court's own precedent, Scott argued that {{"'}}Once free' did not necessarily mean 'always free.{{'"}}<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=66}} He cited the Kentucky Court of Appeals decision in ''Graham v. Strader'', which had held that a Kentucky slaveowner who permitted a slave to go to Ohio temporarily, did not forfeit ownership of the slave.<ref name=":0" /> To justify overturning three decades of precedent, Judge Scott argued that circumstances had changed:<ref name=":1" /><blockquote>Times now are not as they were when the former decisions on this subject were made. Since then not only individuals but States have been possessed with a dark and fell spirit in relation to slavery, whose gratification is sought in the pursuit of measures, whose inevitable consequence must be the overthrow and destruction of our government. Under such circumstances it does not behoove the State of Missouri to show the least countenance to any measure which might gratify this spirit. She is willing to assume her full responsibility for the existence of slavery within her limits, nor does she seek to share or divide it with others.<ref name=":5" /></blockquote>On March 23, 1852, the day after the Missouri Supreme Court decision had been announced, Irene Emerson's lawyers filed an order in the St. Louis Circuit Court for the bonds signed by the Blow family to cover the Scotts' court costs; return of the slaves themselves; and transfer of their wages earned over four years, plus 6 percent interest.<ref name="Missouri Digital Heritage" /> On June 29, 1852, Judge Hamilton overruled the order.<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|page=70}}

===''Scott v. Sanford''=== <!-- Should be SANFORD (not Sandford) here. The clerical error concerning Sanford's name occurred at the US Supreme Court, not at the US District Court. -->
The case looked hopeless, and the Blow family could no longer pay for Scott's legal costs. Scott also lost both of his lawyers when Alexander Field moved to Louisiana and David Hall died. The case was undertaken ''[[pro bono]]'' by [[Roswell Field]], who employed Scott as a janitor. Field also discussed the case with LaBeaume, who had taken over the lease on the Scotts in 1851.<ref name="Ehrlich 1968">{{cite journal |last=Ehrlich |first=Walter |title=Was the Dred Scott Case Valid? |journal=[[The Journal of American History]] |volume=55 |issue=2 |date=September 1968 |pages=256–265 |jstor=1899556 |publisher=Organization of American Historians|doi=10.2307/1899556 }}</ref> After the Missouri Supreme Court decision, Judge Hamilton turned down a request by Emerson's lawyers to release the rent payments from escrow and to deliver the slaves into their owner's custody.<ref name="Missouri Digital Heritage"/>

In 1853, Dred Scott again sued his current owner John Sanford, but this time in federal court. Sanford returned to New York and the federal courts had [[diversity jurisdiction]] under Article III, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution. In addition to the existing complaints, Scott alleged that Sanford had assaulted his family and held them captive for six hours on January 1, 1853.<ref name="Hardy 2012">{{cite journal |last=Hardy |first=David T. |year=2012 |title=Dred Scott, John San(d)ford, and the Case for Collusion |journal=Northern Kentucky Law Review |volume=41 |issue=1 |url=http://chaselaw.nku.edu/content/dam/chaselaw/docs/academics/lawreview/v41/7-Hardy.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151010063026/http://chaselaw.nku.edu/content/dam/chaselaw/docs/academics/lawreview/v41/7-Hardy.pdf |archive-date=October 10, 2015}}</ref>

At trial in 1854, Judge [[Robert William Wells]] directed the jury to rely on Missouri law on the question of Scott's freedom. Since the Missouri Supreme Court had held that Scott remained a slave, the jury found in favor of Sanford. Scott then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the clerk misspelled the defendant's name, and the case was recorded as ''Dred Scott'' v. ''Sandford'', with an ever-erroneous title. Scott was represented before the Supreme Court by [[Montgomery Blair]] and [[George Ticknor Curtis]], whose brother [[Benjamin Robbins Curtis|Benjamin]] was a Supreme Court Justice. Sanford was represented by [[Reverdy Johnson]] and [[Henry S. Geyer]].<ref name="Missouri Digital Heritage"/>

===Sanford as defendant===
When the case was filed, the two sides agreed on a [[stipulation|statement of facts]] that claimed Scott had been sold by Dr. Emerson to John Sanford, though this was a [[legal fiction]]. Dr. Emerson had died in 1843, and Dred Scott had filed his 1847 suit against Irene Emerson. There is no record of Dred Scott's transfer to Sanford or of his transfer back to Irene. John Sanford died shortly before Scott's manumission, and Scott was not listed in the probate records of Sanford's estate.<ref name="Ehrlich 1968"/> Also, Sanford was not acting as Dr. Emerson's executor, as he was never appointed by a probate court, and the Emerson estate had been settled when the federal case was filed.{{sfnp|Finkelman|2007}}

The murky circumstances of ownership led many to conclude the parties to ''Dred Scott'' v. ''Sandford'' contrived to create a [[test case (law)|test case]].<ref name="Fehrenbacher 2001"/><ref name="Ehrlich 1968"/><ref name="Hardy 2012"/> Mrs. Emerson's remarriage to abolitionist U.S. Representative [[Calvin C. Chaffee]] seemed suspicious to contemporaries, and Sanford was thought to be a [[Front organization|front]] and to have allowed himself to be sued, despite not actually being Scott's owner. Nevertheless, Sanford had been involved in the case since 1847, before his sister married Chaffee. He had secured counsel for his sister in the state case, and he engaged the same lawyer for his own defense in the federal case.<ref name="Fehrenbacher 2001"/> Sanford also consented to be represented by genuine pro-slavery advocates before the Supreme Court, rather than to put up a token defense.

===Influence of President Buchanan===
Historians discovered that after the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case but before it issued a ruling, President-elect [[James Buchanan]] wrote to his friend, Supreme Court Associate Justice [[John Catron]], to ask whether the case would be decided by the Court before [[Inauguration of James Buchanan|his inauguration]] in March 1857.<ref name="isbn0-7006-1502-4">{{Cite book |last=Maltz|first=Earl M. |title=Dred Scott and the Politics of Slavery |publisher=University Press of Kansas |location=Lawrence |year=2007 |page=[https://archive.org/details/dredscottpolitic0000malt/page/115 115] |isbn=978-0700615025 |url=https://archive.org/details/dredscottpolitic0000malt/page/115 }}</ref> Buchanan hoped that the decision would quell unrest in the country over the slavery issue by issuing a ruling to take it out of political debate. He later successfully pressured Associate Justice [[Robert Cooper Grier]], a Northerner, to join the Southern majority in ''Dred Scott'' to prevent the appearance that the decision was made along sectional lines.<ref name="isbn0-13-195130-0">{{Cite book |author=Faragher, John Mack |title=Out of Many: A History of the American People |edition=4th (Rev. Printing) |publisher=Prentice Hall |location=Englewood Cliffs, N.J |year=2005 |page=[https://archive.org/details/outofmanytlccomb00john/page/388 388] |isbn=0131951300 |display-authors=etal |url=https://archive.org/details/outofmanytlccomb00john/page/388 }}</ref> According to historian [[Paul Finkelman]]:<blockquote> Buchanan already knew what the Court was going to decide. In a major breach of Court etiquette, Justice Grier, who, like Buchanan, was from Pennsylvania, had kept the President-elect fully informed about the progress of the case and the internal debates within the Court. When Buchanan urged the nation to support the decision, he already knew what Taney would say. Republican suspicions of impropriety turned out to be fully justified.<ref>Paul Finkelman, "''Scott v. Sandford'': The Court's Most Dreadful Case and How It Changed History." ''Chicago-Kent Law Review'', Vol. 82 (2007), pp. 3–48 at p. 46.</ref></blockquote>

Biographer [[Jean H. Baker]] argues that Buchanan's use of political pressure on a member of a sitting court was regarded then, as now, to be highly improper.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wQeVkzfTJcEC&pg=PA85|first=Jean H.|last=Baker |publisher=Times Books|year=2004|isbn=0-8050-6946-1|title=James Buchanan}}</ref> [[History of the Republican Party (United States)|Republicans]] fueled speculation as to Buchanan's influence by publicizing that Taney had secretly informed Buchanan of the decision. Buchanan declared in his inaugural address that the slavery question would "be speedily and finally settled" by the Supreme Court.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres30.html |title=James Buchanan: Inaugural Address. U.S. Inaugural Addresses. 1989 |publisher=Bartleby.com |access-date=July 26, 2012}}</ref>{{sfnp|Finkelman|2007}}

==Supreme Court decision==
On March 6, 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Dred Scott in a 7–2 decision that fills more than 200 pages in the ''[[United States Reports]]''.{{sfnp|Chemerinsky|2019|loc=§&nbsp;9.3.1, p. 750}} It was one of the longest set of opinions in Supreme Court history up to that point.<ref name="CONAN1953">{{Cite book |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/18637/ |title=The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation |year=1953 |pages=x n.9 |chapter=Introduction}}</ref> The decision contains opinions from all nine justices, but the "majority opinion" has always been the focus of the controversy.{{sfnp|Nowak|Rotunda|2012|loc=§&nbsp;18.6}}

===Opinion of the Court===
[[File:Roger B. Taney - Brady-Handy.jpg|thumb|right|upright=.95|[[Chief Justice of the United States|Chief justice]] [[Roger B. Taney|Roger Taney]], the author of the majority opinion in the Supreme Court's ''Dred Scott'' decision]]
Seven justices formed the majority and joined an opinion written by Chief Justice Roger Taney. Taney began the Court's opinion with what he saw as the core issue in the case: whether Black people could possess federal citizenship under the U.S. Constitution.{{sfnp|Chemerinsky|2019|loc=§&nbsp;9.3.1, p. 750}}

{{Blockquote
|text=The question is simply this: Can a negro, whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all of the rights, and privileges, and immunities, guarantied {{sic}} by that instrument to the citizen?
|source=''Dred Scott'', 60 U.S. at 403.
}}

In answer, the Court ruled they could not. It held that black people could not be U.S. citizens, and therefore a lawsuit to which they were a party could never qualify for the "[[Diversity jurisdiction|diversity of citizenship]]" that [[Article III of the United States Constitution|Article III of the Constitution]] requires for a federal court to have jurisdiction over a case that does not involve a [[Federal question jurisdiction|question of federal law]].{{sfnp|Chemerinsky|2019|loc=§&nbsp;9.3.1, p. 750}} 

The primary rationale for the Court's ruling was Taney's assertion that black African slaves and their descendants were never intended to be part of the American social and political community:{{sfnp|Chemerinsky|2019|loc=§&nbsp;9.3.1, p. 750}}

{{Blockquote
|text=We think ... that they [black people] are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time [of America's founding] considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them.
|source=''Dred Scott'', 60 U.S. at 404–05.<ref>Quoted in part in {{harvp|Chemerinsky|2019|loc=§&nbsp;9.3.1, p. 750}}</ref>
}}

The Court then extensively reviewed laws from the original American states that involved the status of black Americans at the time of the Constitution's drafting in 1787.{{sfnp|Chemerinsky|2019|loc=§&nbsp;9.3.1, p. 750}} It concluded that these laws showed that a "perpetual and impassable barrier was intended to be erected between the white race and the one which they had reduced to slavery".<ref>{{harvp|Chemerinsky|2019|loc=§&nbsp;9.3.1, p. 750}}, quoting ''Dred Scott'', 60 U.S. at 409.</ref> The Court therefore ruled that black people were not American citizens and could not sue as citizens in federal courts.{{sfnp|Chemerinsky|2019|loc=§&nbsp;9.3.1, p. 750}} This meant that U.S. states lacked the power to alter the legal status of black people by granting them state citizenship:{{sfnp|Nowak|Rotunda|2012|loc=§&nbsp;18.6}}

{{Blockquote
|text=It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion in relation to that unfortunate race, which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and when the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted. ... They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order ... and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.
|source=''Dred Scott'', 60 U.S. at 407.
}}

This holding normally would have ended the decision, since it disposed of Dred Scott's case by effectively declaring that Scott had no [[standing]] to bring suit, but Taney did not confine his ruling to   the matter immediately before the Court.{{sfnp|Chemerinsky|2019|loc=§&nbsp;9.3.1, p. 750}} He went on to assess the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise itself, writing that the Compromise's legal provisions intended to free slaves who were living north of the 36°N 30' latitude line in the western territories. In the Court's judgment, this constituted the government depriving owners of slave property without due process of law, which is forbidden under the [[Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fifth Amendment]].{{sfnp|Chemerinsky|2019|loc=§&nbsp;9.3.1, pp. 750–51}} Taney also reasoned that the Constitution and the [[United States Bill of Rights|Bill of Rights]] implicitly precluded any possibility of constitutional rights for black African slaves and their descendants.{{sfnp|Nowak|Rotunda|2012|loc=§&nbsp;18.6}} Thus, Taney concluded:

{{Blockquote
|text=Now, ... the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution. ... Upon these considerations, it is the opinion of the court that the act of Congress which prohibited a citizen from holding and owning property of this kind in the territory of the United States north of the [36°N 30' latitude] line therein mentioned is not warranted by the Constitution, and is therefore void....
|source=''Dred Scott'', 60 U.S. at 451–52.
}}

Taney held that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, marking the first time since the 1803 case ''[[Marbury v. Madison]]'' that the Supreme Court had struck down a federal law, although the Missouri Compromise had already been effectively overridden by the [[Kansas–Nebraska Act]]. Taney based this argument on a narrow interpretation of the [[Property Clause]] of Article 4, Section 3 of the Constitution: "The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States..." He ruled that the Property Clause "applied only to the property which the States held in common at that time and has no reference whatever to any territory or other property which the new sovereignty might afterwards itself acquire."<ref>({{cite court |litigants=Dred Scott v. Sanford | vol=60| reporter=U.S. | opinion=149}})</ref> Because the Louisiana Territory was not part of the United States at the time of the Constitution's ratification, Congress did not have the authority to ban slavery in the territory. Thus, the Missouri Compromise exceeded the scope of [[United States Congress|Congress]]{{'s}} powers and was unconstitutional, and hence Dred Scott was still a slave regardless of his residence in the purportedly free Northwest Territory,{{sfnp|McCloskey|2010|p=62}} and he was still a slave under Missouri law, which had proper authority over the matter. For all these reasons, the Court concluded that Scott could not bring suit in U.S. federal court.{{sfnp|McCloskey|2010|p=62}}

===Concurrences===
Justices [[James M. Wayne|Wayne]], [[John Catron|Catron]], [[Peter V. Daniel|Daniel]], [[Samuel Nelson|Nelson]], [[Robert Cooper Grier|Grier]], and [[John Archibald Campbell|Campbell]] all wrote separate concurrences, with Grier joining Nelson's concurrence.

===Dissents===
{{multiple image
| align = right
|total_width = 410
|image1 = Benjamin_Robbins_Curtis_-_photo.png
|image2 = Justice_John_McLean_daguerreotype_by_Mathew_Brady_1849.jpg
|footer = Justices Benjamin Robbins Curtis (left) and John McLean (right), the only two justices who dissented in ''Dred Scott''
}}

Two justices, [[Benjamin Robbins Curtis]] and [[John McLean]], dissented from the Court's decision, and they both authored dissenting opinions. Curtis' 67-page dissent argued that the Court's conclusion that black people could not be U.S. citizens was legally and historically baseless.{{sfnp|Nowak|Rotunda|2012|loc=§&nbsp;18.6}} He pointed out that when the Constitution was adopted in 1789, black men could vote in 5 of the 13 states. Under the law, that made them citizens both of their individual states and of the United States. Curtis cited many historical state laws and court decisions in support of his position. His dissent was "extremely persuasive", and it prompted Taney to delay issuing the decision for several weeks while he added 18 pages of rebuttal to the majority opinion.{{sfnp|Nowak|Rotunda|2012|loc=§&nbsp;18.6}}

McLean's dissent deemed the argument that black people could not be citizens "more a matter of taste than of law". He attacked much of the Court's decision as non-binding ''[[obiter dicta]]'', arguing that once the court determined that it did not have jurisdiction to hear Scott's case, it should have simply dismissed the action without passing judgment on the merits of Scott's lawsuit.

Curtis and McLean both attacked the Court's overturning of the Missouri Compromise. They noted that it was not necessary to decide the question, and that none of the authors of the Constitution had ever raised constitutional objections to the antislavery provisions of the [[Northwest Ordinance]], or the subsequent acts that barred slavery north of [[parallel 36°30' north|36°30' N]], or the prohibition on importing slaves from overseas passed in 1808. Curtis said slavery was not listed in the constitution as a "natural right", but rather was a creation of public law. Article IV, section 3 of the Constitution states, "The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State." No exception was made for slavery, which thus fell under the regulatory power of Congress.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://billofrightsinstitute.org/e-lessons/dred-scott-v-sanford-1857-excerpts-from-majority-and-dissenting-opinions/|title=Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857) Excerpts From Majority and Dissenting Opinions|website=Bill of Rights Institute}}</ref>

==Reactions==
The Supreme Court's decision in ''Dred Scott'' was greeted with widespread fury outside the slave-holding states.{{sfnp|Nowak|Rotunda|2012|loc=§&nbsp;18.6}} American political historian [[Robert G. McCloskey]] described the reaction:

{{blockquote
|text=The tempest of malediction that burst over the judges seems to have stunned them; far from extinguishing the slavery controversy, they had fanned its flames and had, moreover, deeply endangered the security of the judicial arm of government. No such vilification as this had been heard even in the wrathful days following the [[Alien and Sedition Acts]]. Taney’s opinion was assailed by the Northern press as a wicked “stump speech” and was shamefully misquoted and distorted. “If the people obey this decision," said one newspaper, "they disobey God."{{sfnp|McCloskey|2010|p=62}}
}}

Many Republicans, including [[Abraham Lincoln]], who was rapidly becoming the leading Republican in Illinois and was elected President three years later, regarded the decision as part of a plot to expand and eventually impose the legalization of slavery throughout all of the states.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&psid=3282|title=Digital History|website=www.digitalhistory.uh.edu|access-date=2019-06-12}}</ref> Some southern extremists wanted all states to recognize slavery as a constitutional right. Lincoln rejected the court's majority opinion that "the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution," pointing out that the constitution did not ever refer to slaves as property, and in fact explicitly called them "persons".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/cooper.htm|title=Abraham Lincoln's Cooper Union Address|website=www.abrahamlincolnonline.org}}</ref> 

Southern Democrats considered Republicans to be lawless rebels who were provoking disunion by their refusal to accept the Supreme Court's decision as the law of the land. Many northern opponents of slavery offered a legal argument for refusing to acknowledge the ''Dred Scott'' decision on the Missouri Compromise. They argued, following Justice Curtis' dissenting opinion, that the Court's determination that the federal courts had no jurisdiction to hear the case rendered the remainder of the decision a non-binding ''[[obiter dicta|obiter dictum]]''—an advisement rather than an authoritative interpretation of the law. [[Stephen Douglas]] attacked that position in the [[Lincoln–Douglas debates]]:{{blockquote|Mr. Lincoln goes for a warfare upon the Supreme Court of the United States, because of their judicial decision in the ''Dred Scott'' case. I yield obedience to the decisions in that court—to the final determination of the highest judicial tribunal known to our constitution.}}

In a speech at [[Springfield, Illinois]], Lincoln responded that the Republican Party was not seeking to defy the Supreme Court, but he hoped they could convince it to reverse its ruling:<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.mrlincolnandfreedom.org/pre-civil-war/dred-scott/speech-at-springfield-june-26-1857/ |title=Speech at Springfield, June 26, 1857}}</ref>
{{blockquote|We believe, as much as Judge Douglas, (perhaps more) in obedience to, and respect for the judicial department of government. We think its decisions on Constitutional questions, when fully settled, should control, not only the particular cases decided, but the general policy of the country, subject to be disturbed only by amendment of the Constitution as provided in that instrument itself. More than this would be revolution. But we think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous. We know the court that made it, has often over-ruled its own decisions, and we shall do what we can to have it to over-rule this. We offer no resistance to it.}}

Democrats had previously refused to accept the court's interpretation of the U.S. Constitution as permanently binding. During the [[Andrew Jackson administration]], Taney, then Attorney General, had written: {{blockquote|Whatever may be the force of the decision of the Supreme Court in binding the parties and settling their rights in the particular case before them, I am not prepared to admit that a construction given to the constitution by the Supreme Court in deciding any one or more cases fixes of itself irrevokably [''sic''] and permanently its construction in that particular and binds the states and the Legislative and executive branches of the General government, forever afterwards to conform to it and adopt it in every other case as the true reading of the instrument although all of them may unite in believing it erroneous.<ref>[[Don E. Fehrenbacher]] (1978/2001), [[The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics]], reprint, New York: Oxford, Part 3, "Consequences and Echoes", Chapter 18, "The Judges Judged", p. 441; unpublished opinion, transcript in Carl B. Swisher Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.</ref>}}

[[Frederick Douglass]], a prominent black [[abolitionism in the United States|abolitionist]] who considered the decision to be unconstitutional and Taney's reasoning contrary to the Founding Fathers' vision, predicted that the decision would bring the conflict over slavery to a head:{{blockquote|The highest authority has spoken. The voice of the Supreme Court has gone out over the troubled waves of the National Conscience.... [But] my hopes were never brighter than now. I have no fear that the National Conscience will be put to sleep by such an open, glaring, and scandalous tissue of lies....<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cBcoT3Rtqq8C |title=Dred Scott vs. Sandford: A Brief History with Documents|via= Google Boeken |isbn=978-0312128074 |last1=Finkleman |first1=Paul |date=1997 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan }}</ref>}}

According to [[Jefferson Davis]], then U.S. Senator from [[Mississippi]] and later President of the [[Confederate States of America|Confederacy]], the case merely "presented the question whether [[Cuffee]] [a derogatory term for a black person] should be kept in his normal condition or not . . . [and] whether the Congress of the United States could decide what might or might not be property in a Territory–the case being that of an officer of the army sent into a Territory to perform his public duty, having taken with him his negro slave".<ref>Address to the United States Senate on May 7, 1860, reprinted as Appendix F to Davis, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1880).</ref>

==Impact on the litigants==
Irene Emerson moved to Massachusetts in 1850 and married [[Calvin C. Chaffee]], a doctor and abolitionist who was elected to Congress on the [[Know Nothing]] and [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]] tickets. Following the Supreme Court ruling, pro-slavery newspapers attacked Chaffee as a hypocrite. Chaffee protested that Dred Scott belonged to his brother-in-law and that he had nothing to do with Scott's enslavement.<ref name="Hardy 2012"/> Nevertheless, as a means of freeing Scott, the Chaffees executed a deed transferring the Scott family to [[Henry Taylor Blow]], the son of Scott's former owner, who could appear in person before the Missouri court.<ref name="Hardy 2012"/>  Taylor Blow had also previously contributed to Scott's legal fees during the case.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Dred Scott's fight for freedom |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2932.html |access-date=2024-05-19 |website=PBS |series=Africans in America, Part 4, Judgement Day |publisher=WGBH}}</ref> 

Taylor Blow filed the [[manumission]] papers with Judge Hamilton on May 26, 1857. The emancipation of Dred Scott and his family was national news and was celebrated in northern cities. Scott worked as a porter in a hotel in St. Louis, where he was a minor celebrity. His wife [[Laundry#Washhouses|took in laundry]]. Dred Scott died of [[tuberculosis]] on November 7, 1858. Harriet died on June 17, 1876.<ref name="Missouri Digital Heritage" />

==Aftermath==
{{Slavery}}

===Economic===
Economist [[Charles Calomiris]] and historian [[Larry Schweikart]] discovered that uncertainty about whether the entire West would suddenly become slave territory or engulfed in guerilla conflict like
"[[Bleeding Kansas]]" gripped the markets immediately. The east–west railroads became insolvent immediately (although north–south lines were unaffected), in turn causing dangerous runs on several large banks, events known as the [[Panic of 1857]].

This financial panic, unlike [[Panic of 1837|that of 1837]], almost exclusively impacted the North, which the historians attribute to the North's system of unit banking, with many competing banks hiding financial information from one another, breeding uncertainty. In contrast, the South's branch banking system allowed information to move reliably among the branch banks, and transmission of the panic was minor.<ref>Charles Calomiris and Larry Schweikart, "The Panic of 1857: Origins, Transmission, Containment", ''Journal of Economic History'', LI, December 1990, pp. 807–34.</ref>

===Political===
Southerners, who had grown uncomfortable with the Kansas-Nebraska Act, argued that they had a constitutional right to bring slaves into the territories, regardless of any decision by a territorial legislature on the subject. The ''Dred Scott'' decision seemed to endorse that view.

Although Taney believed that the decision represented a compromise that would be a final settlement of the slavery question by transforming a contested political issue into a matter of settled law, the decision produced the opposite result. It strengthened Northern opposition to slavery, divided the Democratic Party on sectional lines, encouraged secessionist elements among Southern supporters of slavery to make bolder demands, and strengthened the [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican Party]].

In 1860, the Republican Party explicitly rejected the ''Dred Scott'' decision in their official platform, stating, "the new dogma that the Constitution, of its own force, carries slavery into any or all of the territories of the United States, is a dangerous political heresy, at variance with the explicit provisions of that instrument itself, with contemporaneous exposition, and with legislative and judicial precedent; is revolutionary in its tendency, and subversive of the peace and harmony of the country."<ref>{{cite web|author=Republican Party|url=https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/republican-party-platform-1860 |title=Republican Party Platform of 1860|website=The American Presidency Project|publisher=University of California at Santa Barbara|accessdate=August 19, 2022}}</ref>

The [[Territorial Slavery Act of 1862]] repudiated ''Dred Scott''.<ref>{{cite book|last=Foner|first=Eric|title=The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery|location=New York|publisher=W.W. Norton|date=2012|isbn=9780393340662|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=earytjxi6pEC|page=204|postscript=none}}; {{cite book|last1=Kent|first1=Andrew|last2=Mortenson|first2=Julian Davis|chapter=Executive Power and National Security Power|title=The Cambridge Companion to the United States Constitution|editor-last1=Orren|editor-first1=Karen|editor-last2=Compton|editor-first2=John W.|location=Cambridge, UK|publisher=Cambridge University Press|date=2018|isbn=9781107094666|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CMhJDwAAQBAJ|page=281}}</ref> In adopting the act, Congress essentially took the view that the ''Dred Scott'' ruling was restricted solely to Dred Scott and his family.<ref>{{cite book|last=Feldman|first=Noah|title=The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America|location=New York|publisher=Picador, Farrar, Straus and Giroux|date=2022|isbn=9781250858788|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PhkQEAAAQBAJ|page=255}}</ref>

==Later references==
In 1859, when defending two black men, [[John Anthony Copeland]] and [[Shields Green]], from the charge of treason following their participation in [[John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry]], their attorney [[George Sennott]] cited the ''Dred Scott'' decision in arguing successfully that since they were not citizens according to that Supreme Court ruling, they could not commit treason.<ref name=Execution>{{cite journal|volume=91|number=5|date=June 1, 2013|journal=[[North Carolina Law Review]]|title=Execution in Virginia, 1859: The Trials of Green and Copeland|author-link=Steven Lubet|first=Steven|last=Lubet|url=https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/nclr/vol91/iss5/9}}</ref> Nevertheless, they were found guilty and executed on other charges.

In 1896, in the [[Jim Crow laws|Jim Crow era]], Justice [[John Marshall Harlan]] was the lone dissenting vote in ''[[Plessy v. Ferguson]]'' (1896), which declared racial segregation constitutional and created the concept of "[[separate but equal]]". In his dissent, Harlan wrote that the majority's opinion would "prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the ''Dred Scott'' case".<ref>Fehrenbacher, p. 580.</ref>

[[Charles Evans Hughes]], writing in 1927 on the Supreme Court's history, described ''Dred Scott'' as a "self-inflicted wound" from which the court would not recover for many years.<ref name="Hughes1936">{{cite book |last=Hughes |first=Charles Evans |author-link=Charles Evans Hughes |title=The Supreme Court of the United States |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=E0TA7en4FqYC&pg=PA50 |year=1936 |orig-year=1928 |publisher=[[Columbia University Press]] |isbn=978-0231085670 |pages=50–51}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/democrac/21.htm |title=Introduction to the court opinion on the Dred Scott case |publisher=U.S. Department of State |access-date=July 16, 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.supremecourt.gov/publicinfo/speeches/sp_03-21-03.html |title=Remarks of the Chief Justice |date=March 21, 2003 |publisher=Supreme Court of the United States |access-date=November 22, 2007}}</ref>

In 1952, as a [[law clerk]] to Justice [[Robert H. Jackson]], future Chief Justice [[William H. Rehnquist]] wrote in a memo on ''[[Brown v. Board of Education]]'': "''Scott v. Sandford'' was the result of Taney's effort to protect slaveholders from legislative interference."<ref>Rehnquist, William. [http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/senate/judiciary/sh99-1067/324-325.pdf "A Random Thought on the Segregation Cases"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080921203658/http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/senate/judiciary/sh99-1067/324-325.pdf |date=2008-09-21}}</ref>

Dissenting from ''[[Planned Parenthood v. Casey]]'' (1992), insofar as it upheld the right to abortion established by ''[[Roe v. Wade]]'' (1973), Justice [[Antonin Scalia]] compared the rationale behind ''Planned Parenthood v. Casey'' to ''Dred Scott'':
<blockquote>
''Dred Scott''&nbsp;... rested upon the concept of "[[substantive due process]]" that the Court praises and employs today. Indeed, ''Dred Scott'' was "very possibly the first application of substantive due process in the Supreme Court, the original precedent for ... ''Roe v. Wade''".<ref>[http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=505&invol=833 ''Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey'', 505 U.S. 833 (1992)]. ''FindLaw''.</ref>
</blockquote> Justice Clarence Thomas similarly compared ''Roe v. Wade'' to ''Dred Scott'' in his concurring opinion in ''[[Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization]]'', the decision overturning ''Roe v. Wade'' in 2022.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization |url=https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/597us1r58_gebh.pdf }}</ref>

Chief Justice [[John Roberts]] compared ''[[Obergefell v. Hodges]]'' (2015) to ''Dred Scott'' as another example of trying to settle a contentious issue through a ruling that went beyond the scope of the Constitution.<ref>[https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf ''Obergefell v. Hodges'', 576 U.S. 644 (2015)].</ref>

Historian [[Sean Wilentz]] called [[Trump v. United States (2024)|Trump v. United States]], the 2024 Supreme Court decision that conferred immunity from criminal prosecution on a president's official acts, "The 'Dred Scott' of Our Time."<ref>Wilentz, Sean. [https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2024/08/15/the-dred-scott-of-our-time/ "The 'Dred Scott' of Our Time"] ''The New York Review of Books'', August 15, 2024.</ref> Other writers made the same comparison.<ref>Beckett, Steve. [https://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/guest-commentary/my-turn-trump-v-united-states-is-the-21st-century-version-of-dred-scott-v/article_01257b5e-3d68-11ef-a12b-9386a56b01c4.html "Trump v. United States is the 21st century version of Dred Scott v. Sandford"] ''The News-Gazette'', July 9, 2024; Blum, Bill. [https://progressive.org/magazine/john-roberts-and-the-second-coming-of-dred-scott-blum-20241003/ "John Roberts and the Second Coming of Dred Scott"] ''The Progressive Magazine'', October 23, 2024.</ref>

==Legacy==
[[File:Dred and Harriet Scott Statue 2 (8257d8fd-c3a1-3d14-164d-d0961fc37038).jpg|thumb|right|Dred and Harriet Scott Statue in St. Louis]]
* 1977: The Scotts' great-grandson John A. Madison Jr., an attorney, gave the invocation at the ceremony at the [[Old Courthouse (St. Louis)|Old Courthouse]] in St. Louis, a [[National Historic Landmark]], for the dedication of a National Historic Marker commemorating the Scotts' case tried there.<ref>{{citation |ref=AA2010 |first=Adam |last=Arenson |contribution=Dred Scott versus the Dred Scott Case |title=The Dred Scott Case: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Race and Law |publisher=Ohio University Press |date=2010 |page=36 |isbn=978-0821419120 }}</ref>
* 2000: Harriet and Dred Scott's petition papers in their [[freedom suit]] were displayed at the main branch of the [[St. Louis Public Library]], following the discovery of more than 300 freedom suits in the archives of the U.S. circuit court.<ref>[[#AA2010|Arenson (2010)]], p. 38.</ref>
* 2006: An historic plaque was erected at the Old Courthouse to honor the active roles of both Dred and Harriet Scott in their freedom suit and the case's significance in U.S. history.<ref>[[#AA2010|Arenson (2010)]], p. 39.</ref>
* 2012: A monument depicting Dred and Harriet Scott was erected at the Old Courthouse's east entrance facing the St. Louis [[Gateway Arch]].<ref name="Patrick, 2015">{{cite news |last1=Patrick |first1=Robert |title=St. Louis judges want sculpture to honor slaves who sought freedom here |url=https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/st-louis-judges-want-sculpture-to-honor-slaves-who-sought/article_490c23e7-bc78-5ca1-b9e5-04019f633fc8.html |access-date=September 2, 2018 |work=stltoday.com |date=August 18, 2015 |quote=Attendees get their first look after the unveiling of the new Dred and Harriet Scott statue on the grounds of the Old Courthouse in downtown St. Louis on Friday, June 8, 2012.}}</ref>
* 2024: During the 2024 presidential campaign, the [[National Federation of Republican Assemblies]] cited ''Dred Scott v. Sandford'' to claim that Vice President [[Kamala Harris]] is not a natural born U.S citizen and therefore is ineligible to run for president.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2024-08-24 |title=Republican group cites Dred Scott ruling as reason Kamala Harris can't be president |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/kamala-harris-president-supreme-court-b2601364.html |access-date=2024-08-25 |website=The Independent |language=en}}</ref>

==See also==
* [[Anticanon]]
* [[American slave court cases]]
* [[Origins of the American Civil War]]
* [[Timeline of the civil rights movement]]

==Notes==
{{notelist}}
{{NoteFoot}}

==References==
===Citations===
{{reflist|25em}}

===Works cited===
{{refbegin|35em}}
* {{cite book |first=Adam |last=Arenson |chapter=Dred Scott Versus the ''Dred Scott'' Case |title=The ''Dred Scott'' Case: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Race and Law |location=Columbus, OH |editor-first=David Thomas |editor-last=Konig |editor-first2=Paul |editor-last2=Finkelman |editor-first3=Christopher Alan |editor-last3=Bracey |publisher=[[Ohio State University Press]] |year=2010 |isbn=978-0821419120}}
* {{cite book |first=Erwin |last=Chemerinsky | authorlink=Erwin Chemerinsky |title=Constitutional Law: Principles and Policies |edition=6th |location=New York |publisher=[[Wolters Kluwer]] |year=2019 |isbn=978-1454895749}}
* {{cite journal |last=Ehrlich |first=Walter |title=Was the Dred Scott Case Valid? |journal=[[The Journal of American History]] |volume=55 |issue=2 |year=1968 |pages=256–265 |doi=10.2307/1899556 |jstor=1899556}}
* {{cite journal |last=Finkelman |first=Paul |url=http://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3570&context=cklawreview |format=PDF |title=''Scott v. Sandford'': The Court's Most Dreadful Case and How it Changed History |volume=82 |issue=3 |pages=3–48 |journal=Chicago-Kent Law Review |year=2007}}
* {{cite book |last=Hughes |first=Charles Evans |author-link=Charles Evans Hughes |title=The Supreme Court of the United States |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=E0TA7en4FqYC&pg=PA50 |year=1936 |orig-year=1928 |publisher=[[Columbia University Press]] |isbn=978-0231085670}}
* {{cite book |first1=Robert G. |author-link1=Robert G. McCloskey |last1=McCloskey |others=Revised by [[Sanford Levinson]] |title=The American Supreme Court |publisher=University of Chicago Press |location=Chicago |edition=5th |year=2010 |isbn=978-0226556864}}
* {{cite book |first1=John E. |last1=Nowak |first2=Ronald D. |last2=Rotunda |title=Treatise on Constitutional Law: Substance and Procedure |publisher=West Thomson/Reuters |location=Eagan, MN |edition=5th |year=2012 |oclc=798148265}}
* {{cite journal |last=Vishneski |first=John S. |title=What the Court Decided in Dred Scott v. Sandford |journal=[[American Journal of Legal History]] |year=1988 |volume=32 |issue=4 |pages=373–390 |jstor=845743 |doi=10.2307/845743}}
{{refend}}

==Further reading==
* Allen, Austin. ''Origins of the'' Dred Scott ''Case: Jacksonian Jurisprudence and the Supreme Court 1837–1857''. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2006.
* [[Jack Balkin|Balkin, Jack M.]] and [[Sanford Levinson|Levinson, Sanford]], "Thirteen Ways of Looking at ''Dred Scott''", ''Chicago-Kent Law Review'', Vol. 82 (2007), pp. 49–95.
* [[Daniel A. Farber|Farber, Daniel A.]] "A Fatal Loss of Balance: ''Dred Scott'' Revisited"], ''Pepperdine Law Review'', Vol. 39 (2011), pp. 13–47
* [[Don Fehrenbacher|Fehrenbacher, Don E.]], ''[[The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics]]''. New York:  Oxford (1978) [winner of [[Pulitzer Prize for History]]].
* Fehrenbacher, Don E. ''Slavery, Law, and Politics: The Dred Scott Case in Historical Perspective'' (1981) [abridged version of ''The Dred Scott Case''].
* [[Paul Finkelman|Finkelman, Paul]]. ''Supreme Injustice: Slavery in the Nation's Highest Court''. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press, 2018. [https://www.fedbar.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Book-Review-pdf-1.pdf Review]
* Finkelman, Paul. "''Scott v. Sandford'': The Court's Most Dreadful Case and How It Changed History", ''Chicago-Kent Law Review'', Vol. 82:3 (2007), pp. 3–48.
* Finkelman, Paul. "Was ''Dred Scott'' Correctly Decided? An 'Expert Report' For the Defendant", ''Lewis & Clark Law Review'', Vol. 12 (2008), pp. 1219–1252.
* [[Joseph Fornieri|Fornieri, Joseph]]. "Lincoln's Critique of ''Dred Scott'' as a Vindication of the Founding". [[Harold Holzer|Holzer, Harold]] and Sara Vaughn Gabbard, eds. ''Lincoln and Freedom: Slavery, Emancipation, and the Thirteenth Amendment''. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 2007, pp. 20-36.
* Graber, Mark. ''Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil''. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
* [[Harry V. Jaffa|Jaffa, Harry V.]] "''Dred Scott'' Revisited". ''Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy'', Vol. 31:1 (2008), pp. 197–217.
* Konig, David Thomas, Paul Finkelman, and Christopher Alan Bracey, eds. ''The'' Dred Scott ''Case: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Race and Law'' (Ohio University Press; 2010) 272 pages; essays by scholars on the history of the case and its afterlife in American law and society.
* Mann, Dennis-Jonathan & Kai P. Purnhagen. "The Nature of Union Citizenship between Autonomy and Dependency on (Member) State Citizenship&nbsp;– A Comparative Analysis of the ''Rottmann'' Ruling, or: How to Avoid a European ''Dred Scott'' Decision?", [https://wilj.law.wisc.edu/issues-archive/volume-29-issue-3/ ''Wisconsin International Law Journal'', Vol. 29:3 (Fall 2011), pp. 484–533].
* [[David M. Potter|Potter, David M.]] ''[[The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861]]'' (1976) pp. 267–296.
* VanderVelde, Lea. '' Mrs. Dred Scott: A Life on Slavery's Frontier'' (Oxford University Press, 2009) 480 pp.
* {{cite book |title=Dred and Harriet Scott: A Family's Struggle for Freedom |last=Swain |first=Gwenyth|year=2004 |publisher=Borealis Books |location=Saint Paul, MN |isbn=978-0873514828}}
* {{cite book |title=I Dissent: Great Opposing Opinions in Landmark Supreme Court Cases |last=Tushnet |first=Mark |author-link=Mark Tushnet |year=2008 |publisher=Beacon Press |location=Boston |isbn=978-0807000366 |pages=31–44}}
* Listen to: American Pendulum II&nbsp;– [http://one.npr.org/i/555247859:555247861 🔊 Listen Now: American Pendulum II]

== External links ==
{{wikisource|Dred Scott v. Sandford|''Dred Scott v. Sandford''}}{{wikiquote}}
* {{wikisource-inline|list=
** ''[[s:Dred Scott v. Sandford|Dred Scott v. Sandford]]''
** {{Cite NIE|wstitle=Dred Scott Case|year=1905|short=x |noicon=x}}
** {{Cite Collier's|wstitle=Dred Scott Case|short=x |noicon=x}}
}}
* {{Caselaw source|case=''Dred Scott v. Sandford'', {{Ussc|60|393|1857|How.|19|el=no}}|cornell=https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/60/393|courtlistener=|findlaw=http://laws.findlaw.com/us/60/393.html|justia=https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/60/393/|loc=http://cdn.loc.gov/service/ll/usrep/usrep060/usrep060393/usrep060393.pdf|openjurist=https://openjurist.org/60/us/393|oyez=https://www.oyez.org/cases/1850-1900/60us393}}
* {{cite book|title=The Dred Scott decision. Opinion of Chief Justice Taney, with an introduction by Dr. J. H. Van Evrie. Also, an appendix, containing an essay on the natural history of the prognathous race of mankind, originally written for the New York Day-book, by Dr. S. A. Cartwright, of New Orleans|url=https://archive.org/details/dredscottdecisio1863unit/page/22/mode/2up/search/Crandall |publisher=[[John H. Van Evrie|Van Evrie, Horton & Co.]]|location=New York|year=1863}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20171222092856/http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/DredScott.html Primary documents and bibliography about the Dred Scott case], from the [[Library of Congress]]
* [http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9031170 "Dred Scott decision"], ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 17 December 2006. www.yowebsite.com
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20070930201342/http://www.historynet.com/magazines/civil_war_times/3037746.html Gregory J. Wallance, "Dred Scott Decision: The Lawsuit That Started The Civil War"], History.net, originally in ''Civil War Times Magazine'', March/April 2006
* [https://www.nps.gov/jeff/index.htm Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, National Park Service]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20080410024057/http://www.infography.com/content/523931007610.html Infography about the Dred Scott Case]
* [http://digital.wustl.edu/d/dre/index.html The Dred Scott Case Collection], Washington University in St. Louis
* [https://www.brown.edu/Research/Slavery_Justice/documents/SlaveryAndJustice.pdf Report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice]
* [http://www.theliberatorfiles.com/category/dred-scott-decision/ Dred Scott case articles from William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist newspaper ''The Liberator'']
* [http://landmarkcases.c-span.org/Case/2/Scott-V-Sandford "Supreme Court Landmark Case ''Dred Scott v. Sandford''"] from [[C-SPAN]]'s ''[[Landmark Cases: Historic Supreme Court Decisions]]''
* [https://books.google.com/books?id=2LoDAAAAQAAJ Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott Versus John F.A. Sandford. December Term, 1856] via [[Google Books]]

{{US5thAmendment|dueprocess}}
{{Missouri in the Civil War}}
{{American Civil War}}
{{Taney Court}}
{{African American topics}}
{{James Buchanan}}

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