Dred Scott and the Dangers of a Political Court

Download or read book Dred Scott and the Dangers of a Political Court written by Ethan Greenberg and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2010-08 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dred Scott exemplies neither originalism nor aspirationalism gone wrong, as many modern critics now argue. Rather, the Dred Scott Court erred chiefly because the majority gave in to the still-relevant temptation to subordinate honest legal reasoning to the pursuit of what the majority regarded as a noble and crucial political agenda_in this case, to protect slavery and the political power of the slave-holding South, and thereby preserve the Union.