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Originally Posted by Melonie
You're also correct that in the Dred Scott case there was no purely legal reason why the court chose to address the 'Missouri Compromise'
I never said this
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... leaving us to draw the conclusion that doing so was politically motivated. I also never said that I thought that the Dred Scott decision was a 'good' decision, particularly from a moral standpoint.
You said you agreed with it (although actually if you understood it, you don't). I never commented on your characterization of it other than you misunderstand it, and continue to.
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What I did say was that one particular portion of the Dred Scott decision, i.e. the court's choice to rely on existing law and strict constitutional interpretation in regard to states' individual rights to allow/continue slavery, was the 'right' decision from a purely legal standpoint.
This remains a completely erroneous understanding of the decision. The decision strips states of their right to emancipate black Americans. It says the issue is Federal, and that black people cannot be citizens in any State. It further makes this a moral issue based on the fact that the framer's owned slaves, hence the reliance on "original intent", although this is never mentioned in the constitution. This is precisely the problem with "original intent", because it provides a rational for otherwise preposterously puritanical and outrageous anachronistic interpretations. In the mid-eighteenth century, children under ten were routinely executed. This was not within the meaing of "cruel and unusual punishment" at that time. It is now. Is it not the domain of the Supreme Court to interpret the meaning of "cruel and unusual"? "Original intent" asserts the absurd doctrine that all such intentionally vague clauses remain frozen in 1780 society.
I think you are reading the dissent. No problem. It's a long and messy decision. Monty quoted exactly the support of states rights section from the dissent.
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The court went to great lengths to point out its own appropriate role from a constitutional standpoint, as well as the appropriate means for the american people to constitutionally address the moral issue of slavery via a constitutional amendment (see my previous quote from the majority opinion).
There is zero chance that I have misunderstood this aspect of the Dred Scott case, as the meaning of the majority opinion text is as plain as day. Justice Scalia raised exactly the same points in a modern context during a recent series of televised debates in regard to the controversial moral issue before the courts today i.e. gay marriage. Both Scalia and the Dred Scott majority essentially said the same thing ...
I love this comment.
Scalia shuns Dred Scott as a Roe v. Wade activist decision. It's quite the pathetic attempt to claim "it is day", at night by sheer volume of the proclamation.
I agree that he's full of shit and is essentially concocting reasons for puritanical opinions under the guise of "original intent". You've misread his opinions on this as well. He denounces Dredd Scott, yet he adopts its perverted method for mandating puritanical precedent.
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if Americans want to change the status quo in regard to a moral issue (slavery, gay marriage), then fine. Go out and convince your neighbors. Draw up a constitutional amendment. But do not expect the US Supreme court to overstep its own constitutional authority and become a moral arbiter on behalf of the 'cause du jour'. Do not expect the US Supreme Court to bypass the constitutionally established legislative process and to 'legislate from the bench' to achieve a legal result which cannot be achieved otherwise.
Also, it has not been mentioned that the Dred Scott case was very politicized in its day, and was essentially the first US Supreme Court case which attempted to place a 'political cause' before the court. The Dred Scott case had it's share of political spinmeisters as well ->
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/l...p?document=772
I cannot BELIEVE you just linked to that speech by Frederick Douglass. I was expecting some ditto head nonsense.
That's one of the great speeches in American History. His profound wisdom was generations ahead of its time. A great American whose words have lost little of their power in 150 years. Great find Mel. That you would call Frederick Douglass a "political spinmeister", this man who was instrumental in the abolition of slavery and has inspired millions of Americans to fight for the righteous cause of racial equality, is very illuminating. Harriet Tubman another political hack? How about Martin Luther King?
If his words cannot reach you, none can.
An excerpt....
by Mr. Douglass:
The argument here is, that the Constitution comes down to us from a slaveholding period and a slaveholding people; and that, therefore, we are bound to suppose that the Constitution recognizes colored persons of African descent, the victims of slavery at that time, as debarred forever from all participation in the benefit of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, although the plain reading of both includes them in their beneficent range.
As a man, an American, a citizen, a colored man of both Anglo-Saxon and African descent, I denounce this representation as a most scandalous and devilish perversion of the Constitution, and a brazen misstatement of the facts of history.
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Good and wholesome laws are often found dead on the statute book. We may condemn the practice under them and against them, but never the law itself. To condemn the good law with the wicked practice, is to weaken, not to strengthen our testimony.
It is no evidence that the Bible is a bad book, because those who profess to believe the Bible are bad. The slaveholders of the South, and many of their wicked allies at the North, claim the Bible for slavery; shall we, therefore, fling the Bible away as a pro-slavery book? It would be as reasonable to do so as it would be to fling away the Constitution.
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The American people have made void our Constitution by just such traditions as Judge Taney and Mr. Garrison have been giving to the world of late, as the true light in which to view the Constitution of the United States. I shall follow neither. It is not what Moses allowed for the hardness of heart, but what God requires, ought to be the rule.
It may be said that it is quite true that the Constitution was designed to secure the blessings of liberty and justice to the people who made it, and to the posterity of the people who made it, but was never designed to do any such thing for the colored people of African descent.
This is Judge Taney’s argument, and it is Mr. Garrison’s argument, but it is not the argument of the Constitution. The Constitution imposes no such mean and satanic limitations upon its own beneficent operation. And, if the Constitution makes none, I beg to know what right has anybody, outside of the Constitution, for the special accommodation of slaveholding villainy, to impose such a construction upon the Constitution?
The Constitution knows all the human inhabitants of this country as "the people." It makes, as I have said before, no discrimination in favor of, or against, any class of the people, but is fitted to protect and preserve the rights of all, without reference to color, size, or any physical peculiarities. Besides, it has been shown by William Goodell and others, that in eleven out of the old thirteen States, colored men were legal voters at the time of the adoption of the Constitution.