Free Republic

By applying positivism instead of natural law, 19th century courts burdened American racial history to this day. When Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that "all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness," he could not have meant then what we understand these words to mean today. When the framers of the government wrote in the Constitution that "No person shall be...deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law," and that the Constitution is "the supreme...

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 re-hearing 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 B. Taney, is almost universally seen as the moral low point of the court's history, participants in...

ST. LOUIS, March 7, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In March 1856, a black slave named Dred Scott was judged by the US Supreme Court to be less than a person. Today his great, great granddaughter, Lynne Jackson, is pointing to the case as a beacon of hope that full human rights will be extended to all citizens, regardless of their age, size or degree of dependency. The March 6, 1857 Dred Scott decision ruled that any person descended from black Africans, whether slave or free, is not a citizen of the United States, according to the U.S. Constitution. Blacks, the ruling...

The framers of the United States Constitution believed that people of African descent “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect,” and that “the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit…. [to be] bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever profit could be made by it.” With reference to the words “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence: “It is too clear for dispute that the enslaved African race was not intended to be included, and formed no part of the people...

On this day in 1857, the Supreme Court announced its infamous Dred Scott v. Sanford decision. The slave, Dred Scott, having travelled in northern states, where he was free, was suing for his freedom after returning to Missouri. The Justices had been wrestling with how a person could be a slave, then free, then a slave again depending where he was. The solution for the seven Democrats on the Supreme Court (the two Republicans dissented) was that blacks could not be citizens anywhere, North or South, so they had no standing to sue in court for anything. Chief Justice Roger...

Analysis of an almost-150-year-old U.S. Supreme Court decision — the Dred Scott case — is important because it helps answer a contemporary question, said Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy: "Why are black people so angry?" Part of the answer is the racism inherent in the foundation of our government, he said, and it's not a historical artifact. "Do we still live in a pigmentocracy? Yeah, we live in a pigmentocracy," Kennedy said Thursday night. "Until it is a (case) that one can read and feel that it is repudiated, it will continue to have . . . a certain potency."...

The U.S. Supreme Court hands down its decision on Sanford v. Dred Scott, a case that intensified national divisions over the issue of slavery. In 1834, Dred Scott, a slave, had been taken to Illinois, a free state, and then Wisconsin territory, where the Missouri Compromise of 1820 prohibited slavery. Scott lived in Wisconsin with his master, Dr. John Emerson, for several years before returning to Missouri, a slave state. In 1846, after Emerson died, Scott sued his master's widow for his freedom on the grounds that he had lived as a resident of a free state and territory. He...

From Wikipedia: Dred Scott was an American slave who was taken first to Illinois, a free state, and then to Minnesota, a free territory, for an extended period of time, and then back to the slave state of Missouri. After his original master died, he sued for his freedom. He initially won his freedom from a Missouri lower court, but the decision was reversed by the Missouri Supreme Court and remanded to the trial court. Simultaneously, Scott had filed suit in federal court, where, after prevailing on the issue of his status as a citizen of Missouri, he lost a...

Somewhere in a north St. Louis County cemetery choked with weeds and surrounded by trash, where toppled tombstones poke through the brush, lies a legend of history. Harriet Scott, it turns out, is buried here, somewhere, at Greenwood Cemetery. For years, no one knew where she lay. They were uncertain even of when she died. Some assumed she rested next to her husband, Dred Scott, in St. Louis. His grave can be found at a tidy, well-marked spot in Calvary Cemetery, where only the grave of playwright Tennessee Williams receives more visitors.

Chicago is no longer my kind of town. It's a liberal Democrat kind of town. It's a town with a gay and lesbian center – funded by taxpayers. It's a town that aborts over 20,000 of its residents a year. It's Jesse Jackson's home town. It's a town where Republicans meet in catacombs. It's a town where even Catholic priests vote 4-to-1 Democrat. So imagine my surprise when last week the overpowered Cook County Republican Party issued a press release accusing Democrat tyrants of abusing their most prized possession, African Americans.

Today (Tuesday) the San Francisco Chronicle ran an editorial entitled, “Why Alito is the wrong choice.” Instead of demonstrating what it says, it demonstrates why the Chronicle has failed to do its homework as reporters, in preparing its editorial. Here’s why: The editorial begins with this statement: In some ways, Alito's taciturn approach to questions about the great constitutional issues of our time was similar to that of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. But the distinction between the history of the two judges -- and the role of the justice they were nominated to replace -- are important. First,...

I've saved this and the response to it for today, Open Line Friday, to share with you. This woman is a subscriber at RushLimbaugh.com. She said, "Rush..." Her name is Anita. "Rush, I'm a die-hard fan. Though I was raised to support a woman's right to choose, since becoming a mother and listening to you over these many years, I've come to strongly believe that abortion is wrong. But because I'm conservative and believe in property rights, I can't reconcile the government's involvement in the ultimate property right to your own body. Can you help me?" So I thought about...

I'm trying to find more cases like Dred Scott (in which the Supreme Court determined that African-Americans could never become citizens, for those who aren't familiar with it) in which the Supreme Court ruling was eventually overturned by executive order or Congressional legislature. Many thanks!

Breaking now on CNN

<p>Michael Schiavo has filed a petition with the Supreme Court asking them to stay out of the case.</p>

Link to LIVE Florida Senate DEBATE.. ABOUT TO VOTE http://199.44.254.202/stations/MBR/UNI/stream1.asx

Pinellas Park police Lt. Kevin Riley, standing upper right, prepares to arrest members of the Keys family as they were attempting to bring Terri Schiavo water Wednesday morning, March 23, 2005 outside the Woodside Hospice in Pinellas Park, Fla. The Keys family, of Burnet, Tex., kneeling, from left, Josie, 14, Gabriel, 10, Chris, the children's father, and Cameron 12, were all taken into custody. Galen Keys, upper left, the children's mother looks on, but was not arrested.The mother insists it was the children's idea: "I am proud of them," said the boys' mother Geilen Keys from Texas, who was not...

Developing...

On Fox News Channel, Martha McCallum just announced that Florida governor Jeb Bush will make a statement on the Terri Schiavo case at 3 PM EST.

If the tragic case of Terri Schiavo shows nothing else, it shows how easily "the right to die" can become the right to kill. It is hard to believe that anyone, regardless of their position on euthanasia, would have chosen the agony of starvation and dehydration as the way to end someone's life. A New York Times headline on March 20th tried to assure us: "Experts Say Ending Feeding Can Lead to a Gentle Death" but you can find experts to say anything. In a December 2, 2002 story in the same New York Times, people starving in India were...

(CNSNews.com) - President Bush's spokesman and Republican congressional leaders Tuesday expressed disappointment over a federal judge's rejection of an emergency request to reinsert Terri Schindler Schiavo's feeding tube. Tuesday was the fourth straight day that the brain injured Florida woman has been without nutrition or hydration. Her husband, Michael Schiavo, last week won a legal battle to have the feeding tube removed and maintains that Terri would not have wanted to live in her present condition. White House spokesman Scott McClellan, who was traveling with the president in Albuquerque, N.M., said Bush "would have preferred a different ruling" from U.S....

FILEDU.S. COURT OF APPEALSELEVENTH CIRCUITMarch 23, 2005THOMAS K. KAHNCLERK[PUBLISH]IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALSFOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUITNo. 05-11556D. C. Docket No. CV-05-00530-TTHERESA MARIA SCHINDLER SCHIAVO,incapacitated ex rel, Robert Schindler andMary Schindler, her parents and next friends,Plaintiffs-Appellants,versusMICHAEL SCHIAVO,as guardian of the person ofTheresa Marie Schindler Schiavo, incapacitated,JUDGE GEORGE W. GREER,THE HOSPICE OF THE FLORIDA SUNCOAST, INC.,Defendants-Appellees.--------------------------Appeal from the United States District Court for theMiddle District of Florida--------------------------(March 23, 2005)Before CARNES, HULL, and WILSON, Circuit Judges.PER CURIAM:Plaintiffs have appealed the district court’s denial of their motion for atemporary restraining order to require the defendants to transport Theresa MarieOur dissenting colleague says...

INDULGE me in a momentary historical fantasy. Suppose that Roger Brooke Taney had not gone down in American history as the principal author of what is now almost universally acknowledged as the worst decision in the history of American jurisprudence, Dred Scott vs. Sandford in 1857. Suppose the country had been shaped in the image of Chief Justice Taney's decision, which decreed that slaves could be carried anywhere in the union, and that Negroes could not be citizens under the Constitution, for they were ""regarded as being of an inferior order and altogether unfit to associate with the white race...

I just finished watching C-SPAN and had to notify Tammy Bruce to repudiate her claim that conservative interpretation of the constitution does not lend itself to restricting abortion. Here is an excerpt from my letter in which I first discussed how I just recently became enlightened on the issue when President Bush mentioned the Dred Scott case in the town hall debate in October. I then go on to discuss why unborn babies are persons and thus entitled by the Constitution to the right to life. I do not believe unborn babies are property. So, how does one prove unborn...

When the Supreme Court issued the Roe v. Wade decision 31 years ago, most pro-lifers understood that the Court had managed to resurrect Dred Scott v. Sandford, the 1857 decision that made it impossible to limit the spread of slavery prior to the Civil War. We are Approaching a Climactic Point Until this year I've heard the comparison between Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade a few times, but only in pro-life circles and publications. Within the last few months, however, I've heard Dred Scott mentioned twice by prominent politicians in very public places, when the issue under discussion was...

WASHINGTON - Soon after President Bush took office, two events set in motion what has become an extraordinary battle between the White House and Senate Democrats over the appointment of federal judges. First, the new president and his aides turned to the Federalist Society, a conservative lawyers' group, to help select candidates. Of Mr. Bush's first batch of nominees, 8 of 11 were proposed by the society. There could have been no clearer signal that Mr. Bush intended to follow the pattern set by his father and President Ronald Reagan of shifting the courts rightward and reaping the political benefit...

David Kirkpatrick, writing an article in today's NY Times, writes critically of President Bush's reference to the Dred Scott case in the third debate: "To liberal lawyers and history buffs, it was a head-scratcher. Did President Bush mean to oppose slavery by pledging in the presidential debates not to appoint the kind of Supreme Court justices who decided the Dred Scott case, the 1857 decision that upheld the fugitive slave law? "To conservative Christian opponents of abortion, Mr. Bush's reference was clear as a bell: opposing Dred Scott is shorthand for opposing Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision...

Bush Judges Rightly on Dred Scott  Democratic politico Susan Estrich on television and the LA Times (see the last paragraph) both went after Bush for his comments on Dred Scott, in response to his answer about whom he would pick for the Supreme Court. But Bush was in fact right in using the Dred Scott case as an example of bad judging and a bad reading of the Constitution.  Like the justice he has expressed admiration for, Clarence Thomas, Bush believes that the Declaration’s “principle of inherent equality … underlies and infuses our Constitution.” Bush’s understanding differs from that...

What would happen if the Supreme Court declared an act of Congress unconstitutional -- and the president told the Court to go jump in a lake? It actually happened once -- a century and a half ago. In 1857, the Supreme Court ruled on the case of a Missouri slave named Dred Scott. Scott's master had taken him into the free state of Illinois. Because of the Missouri Compromise and a law passed by Congress, residents in free states could demand their freedom. Scott did. Scott's owner, John Sandford, challenged the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise. He argued that slaves...

Supreme Court rules in favor of U. of Michigan Admissions Policy