Читать книгу Justice Rehnquist, the Supreme Court, and the Bill of Rights - Steven T. Seitz - Страница 27

Chief Justice Taney wrote an infamous decision Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 19 How. 393 393 (1856). The case introduced confusion regarding both federal and state sovereignty, with advantage to the latter. SCOTUS took the lead position on the most divisive issue since the founding of the country, namely slavery. The debate and tensions appeared in the text of the Constitution. Apportioning representation and direct taxes counted “all other persons” as three-fifths. Congress or Constitutional amendment cannot prohibit the importation of persons as each state may deem fit before 1808. A claimant in one state holding a person to service or labor who escapes to another may demand that person be delivered back.

Taney took full advantage of the importation, taxation and representation, and fugitive clauses to overrule decades of Congressional compromise. Ironically, Taney deemed the Dred Scott conflict non-justiciable. The non-decision should have ended there. Violating the court’s own norm of going no further than necessary in a decision, Taney instead extensively considered slaves taken into free territories by their owners, and Taney further expanded to the nature of Africans and distinguished territories acquired after adoption of the Constitution. The extended dicta created enormous legal havoc and became a contributory cause of the Civil War. The next section presents the Scott decision and the following section examines its impact. Taney’s sweeping policy pronouncement should never have occurred.