ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the Dred Scott decision in the light of legal doctrine contemporary with it, in the view particularly of reassessing the pronouncement therein of unconstitutionality upon the Missouri Compromise. Hostile criticism of the Dred Scott decision, naturally, has always found its principal target in the Chief Justice's opinion, and the gravamen of such criticism has always been that the portion of it dealing with the Missouri Compromise, was obiter dictum. The chapter considers the character of the issue between Chief Justice Taney and Justice Curtis upon the question of citizenship raised by Dred's attempt to sue in the federal courts. The Dred Scott decision cannot be, with accuracy, written down as usurpation, but it can and must be written down as a gross abuse of trust by the body which rendered it.
