b'BODY OF CHRIST NEWS MAGAZINETHE WORST DECISION EVER RENDERED BY THE SUPREME COURT?Maybe NOTWhat say the House of Faith?by Pastor T. S. Mayes, PhDMartin Luther King Jr. once said, In the end, we will remember not the words ofalways free). Emersons widow then left Missouri and gave control of her our enemies, but the silence of our friends1. He also said, I was not afraid oflate husbands estate to her brother, John F.A. Sanford, a resident of New the words of the violent, but of the silence of the honest. A time comes whenYork state. Because Sanford was not subject to suit in Missouri, Scotts silence is betrayal. Recent Supreme Court rulings is an indication of the returnlawyers filed a suit against him in U.S. district (federal) court, which to an era of a shameful nation. According to Britannica, Dred Scott decision,found in Sanfords favor. The case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on March 6, 1857, ruled (72) that aCourt, which announced its decision in March 1857, just two days after the slave (Dred Scott) who had resided in a free state and territory (where slaveryinauguration of Pres. James Buchanan.was prohibited) was not thereby entitled to his freedom; that African Americans were not and could never be citizens of the United States; and that the MissouriChief Justice Roger Brooke Taneys opinion for the court was arguably the Compromise (1820), which had declared free all territories west of Missouri andworst he ever wrote. He ignored precedent, distorted history, imposed north of latitude 3630, was unconstitutional. The decision added fuel to thea rigid rather than a flexible construction on the Constitution, ignored sectional controversy and pushed the country closer to civil war.specific grants of power in the Constitution, and tortured meanings out of other, more-obscure clauses. His logic on the citizenship issue was Among constitutional scholars, Scott v. Sandford is widely considered the worstperhaps the most convoluted. He admitted that African Americans could decision ever rendered by the Supreme Court. It has been cited in particular asbe citizens of a particular state and that they might even be able to vote, the most egregious example in the courts history of wrongly imposing a judicialas they in fact did in some states. But he argued that state citizenship solution on a political problem. A later chief justice, Charles Evans Hughes,had nothing to do with national citizenship and that African Americans famously characterized the decision as the courts great self-inflicted wound. could not sue in federal court because they could not be citizens of the United States. Scotts suit, therefore, should have been dismissed for lack of jurisdiction by the district court. On this point, however, Taney stood Dred Scott was a slave who was owned by John Emerson of Missouri. In 1833on shaky constitutional ground: if even one state considered an African Emerson undertook a series of moves as part of his service in the U.S. military.American a citizen, then the Constitution required that all states, and by He took Scott from Missouri (a slave state) to Illinois (a free state) and finallyinference also the federal government, had to accord that person all into the Wisconsin Territory (a free territory). During this period, Scott met andPrivileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States (Article IV, married Harriet Robinson, who became part of the Emerson household. EmersonSection 2), which includes the right to sue in federal court. Furthermore, married in 1838, and in the early 1840s he and his wife returned with the ScottsArticle III, which establishes the jurisdiction of the federal courts, does not to Missouri, where Emerson died in 1843. mention national citizenship but rather declares that the judicial Power shall extend, among other things, to Controversiesbetween Citizens of Scott reportedly attempted to purchase his freedom from Emersons widow,different States (the so-called diversity jurisdiction).who refused the sale. In 1846, with the help of antislavery lawyers, Harriet and Dred Scott filed individual lawsuits for their freedom in Missouri state court inEven with this weak argument, Taney could have been accused of nothing St. Louis on the grounds that their residence in a free state and a free territoryworse than faulty reasoning, if he had stopped there. If Scott was not a had freed them from the bonds of slavery. It was later agreed that only DredsU.S. citizen, he could not sue in federal court, and the case would therefore case would move forward; the decision in that case would apply to Harrietshave been improvidently granted. But Taney was determined to impose a case as well.judicial solution on the slavery controversy. Although later courts would adopt the policy of deciding constitutional questions on the narrowest Scott v. Emerson took years to be resolved. In 1850 the state court declaredpossible grounds, the pre-Civil War courts often decided all issues that Scott free, but the verdict was reversed in 1852 by the Missouri Supreme Courtcould support their rulings. Thus Taney continued, holding that Scott had (which thereby invalidated Missouris long-standing doctrine of once free,never been free and that Congress had in fact exceeded its authority in the Missouri Compromise because it had no power to forbid or abolish slavery 13 BOCNEWS.COM'