The Real Hawkeye wrote:
Interestingly, as a matter of law, both of those cases were decided correctly. We don't like the outcomes that this fact signifies, so we say they were bad decisions. Actually, Dred Scott was overturned not by a revisit of the decision, but by the post Civil War Amendments to the Constitution.
You have said that the Supreme Court should address matters based solely on the Constitutional import. Some, here, have said that the Supreme Court's sole role is to interpret the Constitution.
The Supreme Court did not address one of the fundamental Constitutional Issue with which it was confronted -- Dred Scott's right to be free -- and focused instead on the slaveowner's property rights. Because Dred Scott was not a "citizen" he had no right to sue in any court! The minute the Supreme Court ruled that Scott (as a slave) had no standing to sue in court, everything else went out the window. He was not a citizen and therefore was not able to benefit from the protection of the laws. I suppose that using that reasoning, had his master chose to kill him, the master could not be prosecuted, either -- as Scott was not a citizen of the state?
As best I can tell, the Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott case, came by its decision using arguments based on precedent, common law, and statutory law. It was not fundamentally a pure application of Constitutional law.
The Court refused to uphold one of those fundamental (unalienable) rights which, I think,
you have said in times past the Constitution should recognize and protect (
liberty)-- and protected, instead, a slaveowner's
property rights. This was done at the expense of Dred Scott's (unalienable?) right to life and liberty.
From the decision:
The rights of private property have been guarded with equal care. Thus the rights of property are united with the rights of person, and placed on the same ground by the fifth amendment to the Constitution.... An Act of Congress which deprives a person of the United States of his liberty or property merely because he came himself or brought his property into a particular Territory of the United States, and who had committed no offense against the laws, could hardly be dignified with the name of due process of law....
No real applicaton of the Constitution, here. They're just sustaining legal custom, precedent, and statutory law.
Need I call attention to the fact that the "property" in question
was a man? And that the right of property was given PRECEDENCE over the right of "person" in this case? Why should property be valued greater than liberty? (Because prior law had ruled that the "person" wasn't really a person, of course. Statutory law and precedent...)
Saying that it was decided correctly, as you do, implies that that you accept that
the Supreme Court can ALSO decide cases on other than solely Constitutional matters.
I think it can and does -- and I think that is a matter that many participating here ignore or simply don't understand. The Supreme Court must and does do more than just interpret the Constitution.
The fact that the Court frequently, when confronted with a Constitutional issue, refuses to hear the case for any of a number of technical reasons, is continuing evidence of that fact. (One might ask how can a "technical" reason overcome a compelling Constitutional concern? They can't, unless the Justices consider those technical pratices equally important to our system of law.)
Happily or unhappily, the Supreme Court acts within the framework of a legal system that dates back hundreds of year before the Constitution, using practices and customs that, if overlooked, would destroy the rule of law and lead to chaos.
That same chaos would occur even in a Court that strictly adhered to "Constructionist" or "Structuralist" values, but ignored the underlying structure/system that makes the Constitution's interpretation and application possible.
