Dred Scott v. Sandford
The Supreme Court ruled that people of African descent — enslaved or free — could never be U.S. citizens and had no right to sue in federal courts, and further declared that Congress had no constitutional authority to ban slavery from U.S. territories, striking down the Missouri Compromise of 1820.
The decision, written by Chief Justice Taney, removed any federal check on the spread of slavery westward, inflamed the national crisis over slavery, and is widely regarded as one of the most catastrophic rulings in American legal history; its citizenship holding was later overturned by the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868.
“so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced tó slavery for his benefit.”
Taney describing the founding generation's stated view of people of African descent, used to support the conclusion that they were never intended to be citizens.
Why this is a landmark case
Dred Scott v. Sandford is widely regarded as the worst decision in the Supreme Court's history. Chief Justice Roger Taney held that people of African descent—whether enslaved or free—could never be citizens of the United States and had 'no rights which the white man was bound to respect,' and further that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in the federal territories, striking down the Missouri Compromise.
Rather than settling the slavery question as Taney hoped, the decision inflamed sectional conflict, energized the antislavery movement, and helped push the nation toward the Civil War. It also marked an early and disastrous use of substantive due process to shield property (in enslaved people) from legislative regulation.
Its landmark status today is as a repudiated anti-precedent. Dred Scott was overturned not by the Court but by constitutional amendment: the Thirteenth Amendment (abolishing slavery, 1865) and the Fourteenth Amendment (1868), whose Citizenship Clause—guaranteeing birthright citizenship—was written specifically to erase Taney's holding. The case stands as the central cautionary example of judicial power used to entrench injustice.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Dred Scott was an enslaved Black man whose owner, an Army surgeon named Dr. Emerson, took him from Missouri to Illinois — a free state — and then to Fort Snelling in territory where the Missouri Compromise of 1820 prohibited slavery. After years of residence in free territory and a return to Missouri, Scott sued for the freedom of himself, his wife Harriet, and their two daughters, arguing that living on free soil had permanently ended his enslavement. John Sandford, who had acquired ownership of Scott from Emerson's estate, disputed both Scott's right to sue and his claim to freedom.
The question before the Court
Could an enslaved person of African descent become a U.S. citizen with the right to sue in federal court, and did Congress have the power to ban slavery from U.S. territories?
The Court's answer
No to both. The Court held that people of African descent — whether enslaved or free — could not be citizens of the United States under the Constitution as originally written, and therefore had no right to file suit in federal court. Chief Justice Taney argued that the founding generation regarded people of African descent as a subordinate class with no rights that white citizens were bound to respect, and that no state law or act of emancipation could change that status at the federal level.
The Court also struck down the Missouri Compromise, holding that Congress lacked authority to ban slavery from U.S. territories. The Territory Clause, the majority said, applied only to land held by the United States at the founding — not to territory later acquired from foreign nations. And even if Congress had some power over acquired territory, the Fifth Amendment barred it from depriving a slaveholder of his enslaved property simply because he brought that property into a federal territory.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court first addressed whether the plea challenging federal court jurisdiction was properly before it. Because federal courts have only limited, specifically defined jurisdiction, the Court held it was obligated to examine the jurisdictional question on the full record, and that the defendant's plea in abatement had not been waived by his subsequent pleading on the merits — unlike in courts of general common-law jurisdiction, where pleading over after a lost plea to jurisdiction waives the objection.
- Turning to citizenship, the Court surveyed colonial laws, early federal statutes, and the text of the Declaration of Independence to conclude that people of African descent had been universally regarded as a 'subordinate and inferior class' at the founding — property, not members of the political community. The Court held that the word 'citizen' in the Constitution was understood to include only those recognized as part of that community in 1787, permanently excluding people of African descent regardless of whether they were enslaved or free.
- The Court rejected the argument that a state could make someone a U.S. citizen by granting state citizenship. State-level and federal citizenship are distinct: a state can confer local rights, but it cannot unilaterally introduce a new member into the national political family created by the Constitution. Because Scott could not be a citizen of Missouri for Article III purposes, the Circuit Court had no power to hear his suit.
- Despite finding the Circuit Court lacked jurisdiction, the Court proceeded to examine whether Scott's residence in free territory had freed him — reasoning that this, too, bore on jurisdiction since Scott's own pleadings claimed freedom as the basis for his status. On the Illinois question, the Court applied the rule of Strader v. Graham (a 1851 decision holding that a slave's status upon return to a slave state is governed exclusively by that state's law). Missouri's Supreme Court had ruled Scott remained a slave under Missouri law, and the federal courts were bound to follow that determination.
- On the Missouri Compromise, the Court interpreted the Territory Clause — giving Congress power to 'make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory' — as applying only to land already held by the United States when the Constitution was adopted, not to territory later acquired from France or other foreign nations. The historical background of the clause, tied to the states' cessions of western land claims, showed it was a specific, limited provision rather than a general grant of sovereign power over future acquisitions.
- Even if Congress had some implied power to govern acquired territories, the Court held that enslaved people were recognized property under the Constitution, and that an act of Congress declaring that property free the moment its owner crossed a geographic line deprived the citizen of property without due process of law, in violation of the Fifth Amendment. The Missouri Compromise was therefore void and could confer no freedom on Scott or his family.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Strader et al. v. Graham (10 How., 82)
Reaffirmed that a slave's status upon return to a slave state is governed exclusively by that state's own law.
Distinguishes Legrand v. Darnall (2 Peters, 664)
Distinguished as having never actually decided whether a person of African descent could sue as a citizen in federal court.