Fill out this form to email this article to a friend
Lessons of Dred Scott relived in mock hearing
The ruling that denied citizenship to blacks offers cautions for judges, participants say.
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published April 8, 2007
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - A century and a half after the Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott decision that no black - slave or free - could ever become a U.S. citizen, the case's legacy is still being debated. The fallout from the 1857 decision, which helped spark the Civil War, was the subject of a mock rehearing of the case before a 10-member court led by Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer at Harvard Law School on Saturday. While the decision, issued by Chief Justice Roger Taney, is seen as the moral low point of the court's history, participants in the mock hearing said the case still had a lot to say to the country 150 years later. Former Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr said the case has a lesson for judges. Besides being racist and morally bankrupt, the Dred Scott decision also reflected the arrogance of judges like Taney, who tried to elevate themselves over the U.S. Constitution, he said. "This is an enduring lesson - this isn't just a history lesson - for judges including, of course, justices of our Supreme Court to be humble," Starr said. In the ruling, Taney wrote that since the country's founding, blacks had been "bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be made." Even more troubling for many was Taney's dismissal of the promise of the Constitution that "all men are created equal." "It is too clear for dispute, that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included," wrote Taney, a former slave owner. Breyer said the case raises not just legal and ethical questions, but practical questions about how justices involved in thorny moral legal cases can communicate concerns to fellow judges. "Do you just go around perhaps saying through your words and voices, 'This is a real horror?' "
[Last modified April 8, 2007, 01:16:26]
Share your thoughts on this story
|
News
Fifty years ago, they were screwed-up kids sent to the Florida School for Boys to be straightened out. But now they are screwed-up men, scarred by the whippings they endured. Read the story and see a video and portrait gallery.
Print
Email story
Comment
Email editor
