LAD# 16 Dred Scott Desicion

The Dred Scott Case decision deals with the issues of "Negro citizenship and the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise". Chief Justice Taney believe that blacks were not eligible to sue in the court of the United States in "the cases specified by the Constitution". Taney believed that "even free Negroes, were not citizens of the United States, and that therefore, Scott, as a Negro, did not even have the privilege of being able to sue in a federal court". In regards to the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise, he stated that all citizens within certain territories could not be denied the rights and protection of the Constitution. Meaning there was "no distinction between the slaves and other types of property". That means that slaves were the property of there masters. "The Missouri Compromise deprived slaveholding citizens of their property of their slaves and that therefore was unconstitutional" because "Scott had brought suit in Missouri and hence he was still a slave because Missouri was a slave state." The case was later dismissed for lack of jurisdiction and Scott remained a slave.