Every Day Is Special: March 6 - Dred Scott - SCOTUS's most dreadful decision!

March 6 - Dred Scott - SCOTUS's most dreadful decision!

Posted on March 6, 2019

Here are my three favorite SCOTUS
justices: Justice Sotomayor, Justice
Ginsburg (RBG!), and Justice Kagan.

As a citizen of the United States, I shake my head over Congress's shenanigans - and their lack of getting things done - regularly. I shudder over certain presidents' actions and words. But I always have high hopes for the high courts.

Judges are supposed to be...well, judicious! Fair, level-headed, having good judgment, good sense.

Especially Supreme Court justices - once nominated and confirmed, they are for the most part out of the political fray. They don't have to worry about reelection or campaign fundraising. They can take the big view, the long view. They can think carefully, discuss with all those other judicious types, and help our nation become more just.

And I have seen some really good decisions coming out of the Supreme Court!

But, like all human institutions, SCOTUS is made up of humans, and humans have flaws and biases, and sometimes the Supreme Court makes terrible decisions.

Like Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission - when the Supreme Court ruled that corporations and unions can spend all the money in the universe on political ads, it tossed out some of hard-won campaign finance reforms. It opened the floodgates to special interests and Big Money.

That ruling has made elections a lot less fair, and whenever elections are less fair, the nation's laws, policies, and institutions become less fair. The will of the majority of the people in the U.S. is regularly defied by lawmakers who get tons of contributions from big corporations.

But that terrible ruling is not considered the worst decision that the Supreme Court ever made; instead, Dred Scott v. Sanford is regularly called by scholars and historians THE WORST.

This is the anniversary of the 1857 ruling.

Dred Scott was a black man who was enslaved. His new owner, a U.S. Army surgeon, had taken him to Illinois - which was a free state. No slavery allowed!

Then the surgeon took him to the Wisconsin Territory, which was also free, without slavery. There Scott met and married Harriet Robinson, an enslaved woman; the civil wedding ceremony was officiated by his wife's owner, who was a justice of the peace.

When the surgeon was relocated to a military post in the South, the doctor left Scott and his wife behind in the Wisconsin Territory - and, crucially, he leased their services to someone else and therefore made a tidy profit on their labor.

I guess it wasn't against the law, then, to bring one's slaves into free states and territories, but it WAS against the law to bring the institution of slavery there. And by leasing his slaves' labor, the army surgeon was therefore breaking the law.

Several years went by. The doctor married a woman named Eliza Sanford, and he sent for Dred Scott and Harriet to serve them where they were stationed in Louisiana. While traveling to the South, and while they were still in a free state, the Scotts had a baby who would normally be considered free (having been born in a free state). When the entire group - the doctor and his wife, Scott and his family - were relocated back to the Wisconsin Territory, the doctor's wife hired out the Scotts' labor, as her husband had done years before. Dred Scott tried to purchase his family's freedom but was refused. Then he tried to sue in court for his freedom.

This statue of Dred and Harriet Scott was
unveiled in St. Louis, MO, in 2012.

Actually, it should have gone well. At the time they were living in Missouri, and Missouri courts had heard other cases in which enslaved people had been taken into free states and territories for extended periods of time - and in all of those cases, the courts had freed the slaves.

But Scott lost his first case on a technicality. He won the second trial! - but his owner appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, the decision to free Scott was reversed.

At this point Scott and his family had been transferred in ownership to the brother of the doctor's wife, John F. A. Sanford. Dred Scott sued his current owner in federal court, this time, and when he lost again he appealed to the Supreme Court.

Here is where things got really goopy: the guy who had just been elected President of the U.S., James Buchanan, wrote to his pal, one of the justices of SCOTUS. He asked that the decision would put the future of slavery on firm standing, so that it would no longer be a hot-button issue in politics. Then he also pressured one of the Northern justices to side with the Southern justices, so that it didn't look as if it were a North vs. South split. These attempts by the president-elect were completely improper (then and now) - the three branches of the government are supposed to be separate branches capable of providing "checks and balances" on one another.

(Buchanan's completely improper pressure on SCOTUS justices is one of the main reasons that Buchanan is considered by many scholars to be second-to-last in presidential rankings - with only Donald Trump being ranked an even worse president.)

Buchanan's pressure worked, in a way: the court ruled 7 - 2 that African Americans (whether free or slave) could not be considered American citizens and therefore could not sue in federal court.

Buchanan's pressure DIDN'T work, long-term and big-picture: the decision caused an uproar in the North. Abolitionists became even more impassioned, people who hadn't taken sides became abolitionists, and the decision ended up being (indirectly) a cause of the Civil War.

The written opinion included what it called a "parade of horribles," a list of things that the majority judges worried would happen if black people could be citizens. Get this: They worried that black people who were citizens could have free speech! They could hold public meetings! They could carry firearms! They could even travel, go on vacation!

The statue of SCOTUS Chief Justice Roger Taney,
author of the infamous Dred Scott opinion, was
removed from outside the Maryland State House in 2017.

Oh, man, the Supreme Court Justices were SO-so-so-so-SO racist, weren't they? The good news is that this tirade against black people actually hastened the "horrible" things that they warned about. If they hadn't made such a unjust decision, and if they hadn't stated their opinion with such blatantly awful arguments, it might have taken much longer before black people became citizens. Unfortunately, racist people were able to squelch a lot of black people's rights for decades, but hopefully the current racial problems will continue to spur action and result in a better, more just society:

One where everybody can barbecue, use swimming pools, vote, run for office, and take photos of their toddlers on public sidewalks WITHOUT being harassed!

This month we saw another shameful attack by a white
person on a black family doing something perfectly normal
and nice. The wealthy divorced wife of the Houston
Astros owner, Franci Neely, screamed at and even hit
a couple taking photos of their one-year-old child.