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Post by bulkey on Mar 6, 2024 9:57:57 GMT -5
It showed the Supreme Court for what it often really is: a political entity. Before deciding Scott, Chief Justice Taney violated all rules of divided government and conferred with the sitting President James Buchanan about the political advantages of different outcomes. More importantly, of course, it confirmed legally embedded racism in the US until the Civil Rights acts of the 1960s.
What follows is from the remarkable Equal Justice Initiative, that offers daily reflections on social justice. It comes to my email mailbox, so I don't have a link. But you can google it, probably.
In the spring of 1846, Dred Scott and his wife, Harriet Robinson Scott, thought they had a chance at freedom. They lived in Missouri, a “slave state,” but their enslavers had previously taken them to free states or territories where slavery was outlawed. Other enslaved people had won so-called “freedom suits” in St. Louis courts thanks to Missouri’s “once free, always free” doctrine, which held that once an enslaved person had been taken to free territory, they remained free even after they returned to a “slave state.”
When the Scotts’ enslaver died, leaving his estate to his widow, the Scotts sued for their freedom. The Scotts’ case moved slowly through the legal system, ultimately reaching the U.S. Supreme Court. Five of the nine justices were from families that enslaved people.
On the morning of March 6, 1857, Chief Justice Taney read aloud the 7-2 majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford. The Scotts were not, and never could be, American citizens, the Court held, and therefore had no right to sue in federal court. They would remain enslaved.
The Court viewed the principle in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” through the lens of white supremacy. Those words “would seem to embrace the whole human family,” the Court acknowledged. However, “it is too clear for dispute,” that no one had ever intended such equality to apply to Black people, enslaved or free. By the “common consent” of all “civilized Governments and the family of nations,” the Court said, “the negro race” had been ”doomed to slavery.”
The Dred Scott decision validated the doctrine of racial difference, enshrining racist ideology that continues to haunt our nation today
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Post by meyers7 on Mar 6, 2024 15:29:02 GMT -5
Although it did hasten the Civil war which ultimately brought slavery in the USA to an end. Along with the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments.
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Post by vtcwbuff on Mar 6, 2024 18:54:49 GMT -5
Dred Scott was 167 years ago. It's past time to look at historical context and move on. Of course the court has political leanings. Why shouldn't it? If the current court leaned in the other direction, would you have the same opinion?
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Post by UConnChapette on Mar 7, 2024 10:35:15 GMT -5
Sorry. I believe the Supreme Court should be free of political leanings. Their job is to rule on the basis of the Constitutional provisions, not based on their political beliefs and leanings.
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Post by huskyharper on Mar 7, 2024 20:22:23 GMT -5
Sorry. I believe the Supreme Court should be free of political leanings. Their job is to rule on the basis of the Constitutional provisions, not based on their political beliefs and leanings. nothing is free of politics these days.
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Post by vtcwbuff on Mar 7, 2024 22:29:42 GMT -5
Sorry. I believe the Supreme Court should be free of political leanings. Their job is to rule on the basis of the Constitutional provisions, not based on their political beliefs and leanings. We all can believe that, but we all have to accept that the members are all human and they all have political leanings. They are selected because of their political leanings. |
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Post by swash on Mar 7, 2024 23:00:09 GMT -5
Sorry. I believe the Supreme Court should be free of political leanings. Their job is to rule on the basis of the Constitutional provisions, not based on their political beliefs and leanings. Agreed. But that won't prevent hoards (on both sides, but generally one at a time) throwing a hissy fit ..."XXX decision was clearly a case of bias!" Vastly too many suppose that some social media stream or article or talking head they saw makes it "obvious that the court was wrong." Such judgements are almost universally associated with minimal actual knowledge of the laws, precedents, constitution, and nuances of the case, and most criticisms are originated by those with a cause celebre ... a bias of their own. The truth is that that there is perhaps a tiny fraction of one percent of us (certainly not me) who are in a position to judge. People who are truly aware generally have two things in common: They have studied the court for decades, and they recognize that the decisions are generally well reasoned even if unpopular. Of course there is justification for criticisms of SCOTUS past and present, and to discuss the long term ramifications ... intended or otherwise ... of past decisions. It is perfectly acceptable to dislike a ruling or the fallout of what that ends up meaning. To borrow loosely from Churchill ... [this method] is the absolute worst ... except for all of the others. |
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Post by mulliganspa on Mar 8, 2024 12:35:13 GMT -5
Sorry. I believe the Supreme Court should be free of political leanings. Their job is to rule on the basis of the Constitutional provisions, not based on their political beliefs and leanings. Agreed. But that won't prevent hoards (on both sides, but generally one at a time) throwing a hissy fit ..."XXX decision was clearly a case of bias!" Vastly too many suppose that some social media stream or article or talking head they saw makes it "obvious that the court was wrong." Such judgements are almost universally associated with minimal actual knowledge of the laws, precedents, constitution, and nuances of the case, and most criticisms are originated by those with a cause celebre ... a bias of their own. The truth is that that there is perhaps a tiny fraction of one percent of us (certainly not me) who are in a position to judge. People who are truly aware generally have two things in common: They have studied the court for decades, and they recognize that the decisions are generally well reasoned even if unpopular. Of course there is justification for criticisms of SCOTUS past and present, and to discuss the long term ramifications ... intended or otherwise ... of past decisions. It is perfectly acceptable to dislike a ruling or the fallout of what that ends up meaning. To borrow loosely from Churchill ... [this method] is the absolute worst ... except for all of the others. Well said. A President will appoint judges who share the same ideology. Those who don’t will be displeased with the subsequent rulings. Nothing new there but what IS different with this court is that there are Justices on this court who have clearly been bought and paid for. That goes beyond shared ideology and destroys trust in one of our branches. Add to that a Justice who will not recuse himself from cases that his wife was right in the middle of. Sad. |
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Post by bulkey on Mar 9, 2024 1:41:08 GMT -5
Actually, while I agree that most judges tend to vote the way that the Presidents who appointed them favor (notable exceptions are Earl Warren and Whizzer White--the former unexpectedly tilted left; the latter unexpectedly right), my point was that the President of the United States openly lobbied directly with the Court for that outcome before it was written. That violated separation of powers. For example www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/president-james-buchanan-directly-influenced-outcome-dred-scott-decision-180962329/Supreme Court justices are supposed to never talk to anyone about impending decisions, even and especially with an equal branch of government. Politics is one thing; breaking down the boundaries of Constitutional procedure is another. Dred Scott is often thought of as the very worse decision the Supreme Court has ever rendered. It was of course catastrophic to African Americans. But it was also perhaps the most blatantly wrong decision procedurally ever as well. After Citizens United--a decision which is responsible for much of the political chaos since its rendering in 2010--President Barack Obama chastised the Supreme Court judges sitting before him at his State of the Union message. They rightly shouted back at him, defending separation of powers. Obama was right that it was a horrible decision. But he was wrong in using that stage to publicly criticize it after it was rendered That was the very most minor of procedural errors. What Buchanan did--actually lobby for an outcome before the fact--was the very worst. |
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Post by knightsbridgeaz on Mar 9, 2024 13:39:58 GMT -5
Sorry. I believe the Supreme Court should be free of political leanings. Their job is to rule on the basis of the Constitutional provisions, not based on their political beliefs and leanings. We all can believe that, but we all have to accept that the members are all human and they all have political leanings. They are selected because of their political leanings. That to me is the problem with the selection process. Best liberal or best conservative is not "best". But it has pretty much always been that way. To answer an earlier question, I'm not sure I know what decisions are "wrong" but I have always felt that some decisions in my lifetime (on both sides) seemed politically influenced. It's popular to criticize today's court, but there were some courts that leaned the other way and I suspect that affected their decisions. My biggest objection to the current court is the selection process which was highly politicized. Of course, Democrats years ago took politicized selection to a high level as well, nothing new here. To be honest, most decisions are not political nor particularly contentious. It is the few that are where the concern is. |
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