Research Paper: Dread Scott v. Sandford - Essay Example

The congress having faced adverse divisions, and as a way of ensuring the reflection of these divisions within the nation, the Supreme Court opted to take an extremely unusual move of hearing a fugitive slave’s case who had decided to sue his master for in search for freedom. The court’s ruling could be said to have aimed at being a definitive ruling, which would devise a remedy to the controversy that posed a considerably permanent threat to the union. Instead, the case ended up producing divisive decisions, which took the nation a step closer to the civil war precipice.

In his time, John Marshall had been the only considerably influential advocate to the strong National Government but had passed on in 1835. Andrew Jackson, the then president, appointed Roger Taney B as the nation’s chief justice and during his time of service he had managed to uphold strong national power although it had a few modifications. He effectively endorsed what could be referred to as dual sovereignty, which meant that the federal and state governments could view each other as foreign; each of them could possess its own right of sovereignty.

In 1857, Taney had presided over a certain court, which had an expansion of about nine justices and a division of five southerners and four northerners hence Taney had remained on the bench. The case’s circumstance Dred Scott had been a Missouri slave. He had been sold to John Emerson, an army surgeon in Saint Louis in approximately 1833 and had been moved to Illinois, which had been considered a free state, then to Wisconsin Territory (a free territory) before being moved back to Missouri.

In 1843, Emerson passed on giving Scott a chance to sue his widow in the Missouri Supreme Court in an attempt to obtain his freedom, claiming that the residence he had within the free soil of Missouri had been enough to make him a free individual. After losing at the State Courts, Scott decided to file the suit at the local federal, court. About eleven years after his initial suit, Scott’s case was brought before the American Supreme Court. Constitutional issues Could a slave attain his freedom upon setting foot to a free state?

Would a black or a slave earn an actual entitlement to suing within federal courts? Had the slave transportation subject to the federal regulation? Would the Federal Government be able to seize a citizen’s right to property (the interstate transportation of property or slaves) without any due lawful, process? Could a property or item (slave) be snatched from its owner without any just compensation? Eventually, had the Missouri Compromise been a constitutionally valid National Government’s action?

Could Congress be able to prohibit slavery within a delegate or territory that had powers of a territory’s legislature? At the time when the decision had been made, there had been black citizens together with black slaves. The black citizens had been the blacks’ descendants who had been citizens of the US during the time of constitutional adoption. While the black slaves had been black people’s descendants who had been slaves during the time of constitutional adoption, there had also been free color persons meaning the black slaves who had been emancipated way before the constitution, had been adopted in the US together with the period after the constitutional ad