SCOTUS
Dred Scott v. Sandford
DecidedMar 18, 1857
7-2decision
Source: CourtListener.
Supreme Court rules Black Americans cannot be U.S. citizens and Congress cannot ban slavery in territories
What it does
The ruling holds that Black people, whether enslaved or free, descended from Africans brought to America as slaves, are not and cannot become "citizens" under the U.S. Constitution, and therefore cannot sue in federal courts. It also strikes down the Missouri Compromise's prohibition of slavery in federal territories north of a certain line, holding that Congress has no constitutional power to bar slaveholders from bringing slaves as property into any federal territory.
Who benefits
Slaveholders and enslavers, who gain a constitutional guarantee that they may bring enslaved people into any federal territory as protected property, free from congressional restriction.
Who is affected
Black Americans, free or enslaved, who are declared ineligible for U.S. citizenship and barred from access to federal courts; and settlers and residents of federal territories, who lose the ability, through their territorial or congressional representatives, to exclude slavery from those territories.
Practical impact
The decision immediately barred any person of African descent from suing in federal court as a citizen, denying enslaved and free Black Americans access to that avenue for asserting legal rights, and it invalidated the Missouri Compromise, opening all federal territories to slavery regardless of congressional restriction. The ruling inflamed sectional conflict over slavery's expansion, is widely credited with deepening the political crisis that led to the Civil War, and was later nullified as constitutional law by subsequent amendments.
Majority reasoning
Chief Justice Taney's opinion for the Court reasoned that at the time the Constitution was adopted, people of African descent were regarded, in the language and understanding of the framers, as an inferior class having no rights that white citizens were bound to respect, and were not considered part of "the people" who formed the political community. The Court pointed to colonial and state laws restricting Black people's rights, exclusion from naturalization statutes limited to "free white persons," and provisions of the Constitution treating slaves as property, as evidence that Black people were never intended to be included as constitutional "citizens." On the territorial question, the majority held that the clause empowering Congress to make "rules and regulations" for U.S. territory applied only to territory owned at the time of the Constitution's adoption, and that Congress's power over later-acquired territory was limited by the Fifth Amendment's protection of property, meaning Congress could not deprive a slaveholder of his slave property merely by his presence in a federal territory.
Dissent reasoning
Justice McLean dissented, arguing that free persons of color could be and were citizens of several states at the founding, that the plea denying jurisdiction was legally defective because it did not show Dred Scott was not free, and that Congress had long and repeatedly exercised the power to prohibit slavery in the territories, including under the Missouri Compromise, a power he found consistent with the Constitution's grant of authority to govern territories and admit new states. Justice Curtis, in a separate and lengthy dissent, argued in detail that free Black persons born in several states were citizens of those states and thus citizens of the United States under the Constitution as understood at its adoption, since some states allowed free Black men to vote and participate in ratifying the Constitution itself. Curtis further argued that Congress's power to make "all needful rules and regulations" for U.S. territories was a broad and long-recognized legislative power, exercised without serious constitutional objection for over sixty years, and that nothing in the Constitution created an exception for laws regulating or prohibiting slavery, so the Missouri Compromise's prohibition was a valid exercise of that power and Scott's residence in free territory changed his legal status to that of a free man.
Constitutional question
Can a person of African descent whose ancestors were sold as slaves be a "citizen" under the Constitution and sue in federal court, and did Congress have power under the Constitution to prohibit slavery in the federal territories?
Precedent changed
The Court's holding that Congress lacked power to prohibit slavery in the federal territories invalidated the Missouri Compromise Act of 1820, marking one of the first instances of the Supreme Court striking down a major federal statute as unconstitutional.