The Supreme Court makes a controversial decision: they rule
that state laws are denying a Constitutional right. The decision satisfies a small but rich and
powerful constituency concentrated in a small number of states allied with the
Democratic Party, infuriating a faction of the Republican Party that a
federal judge characterized as “semi-religious.. almost invariably
characterized by intolerance and bigotry.”
Are you thinking of the recent gay marriage decision? No, it’s U.S. Supreme Court decision Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857).
Huh?
In the period before the Civil War, many Northern states
expressed their disapproval of slavery and the federal Fugitive
Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850 by passing state
“personal liberty laws,” for the purpose of guaranteeing
that persons accused of being runaway slaves would enjoy protection of due
process. Dred Scott federally overturned
these state laws, guaranteeing citizens the right to own slaves across the
nation, regardless of regional preference.
This effectively destroyed the right of citizens to make their own laws.
Why the fugitive slave laws, when most states did not allow
slavery? Because the Constitution explicitly
provided for such laws to which the slaveowners could point without any
judicial creativity The other reason is
that a small minority of wealthy people – slaveowners – demanded these fugitive
slave laws to maintain control over their slaves. They were called by abolitionists the “slaveocracy.” In 1856, the Democratic National Committee
ridiculed the notion that the slaveocracy existed or was a problem., but
clearly, they were a powerful part of the Democratic Party.
The
slaveowners asserted that blacks were naturally not suited to freedom; freedom
was a “curse” to them. Their status was
something they were born to, and they could not change. This is quite similar to the current belief
that homosexuality is inborn and immutable, even though the evidence strongly
suggests that homosexuality
and its associated dysfunctions (suicide, depression, substance abuse and obesity),
at least for some, is a symptom of childhood sexual abuse.
Nineteenth century scientific thought had largely adopted
the view that
racial differences reflected fundamental differences caused by different
origins of the races. Reginald
Horsman’s Race and Manifest Destiny
examines how 19th century scientific thinking promoted the ideas of
slavery, imperialism, and colonialism.
Inborn and immutable racial differences mattered more than culture or
chioice.
Of course, it was not just scientists back then promoting
these views. Christianity largely split
along regional lines before the Civil War as many religious leaders decided
that slavery was pragmatically good and Biblically based. Others, largely in the North, decided
otherwise. As John
Patrick Daly’s When Slavery Was Called
Freedom observes, these splits over slavery were at their core splits
over theology. Slavery was only a proxy
for a split built around the emerging Northern evangelical emphasis on morality
and the Southern churches’ desire to embrace to the culture of slavery, power,
and money. This is much like the way
many Christian churches today are selectively
reading the Bible to satisfy a popular media driven need to see homosexuality
as Biblical, and to be seen as tolerant by the larger society.
So where will the recent
decision lead us? Dred Scott led to increasing polarization, as Americans who
abhorred slavery saw their states lose the authority to pass laws on the
subject. The election of Lincoln in 1860
led to the Civil War as the slaveocrats feared Lincoln might block expansion of
slavery in the Western territories. This
time, it is more likely that the election of a pro-gay President (likely
Democrat but perhaps Republican) dedicated to crushing out the right of
conscience could lead to the split. The Texas
Attorney-GeneraL has already encourage county clerks to ignore the Court’s
“lawless ruling.” If this ignoring
Supreme Court decisions seems dangerous, the
Obama Administration has already decided to ignore a Supreme Court ruling they
don’t like.
Clearly, they can’t have a moral objection to ignoring the Court.
Lines are being drawn.
I don't see what Dred Scott had to do with the personal liberty laws. Dred Scott held that there was no authority of the Federal government to regulate or limit slavery in the territories; also, as an obiter dictum of Chief Justice Taney, that blacks could not be citizens.
ReplyDeletePersonal liberty laws did not come into it at all. It is quite arguable that the personal liberty laws were unconstitutional, as they were state attempts to regulate or limit the Federal power, explicitly granted in the Constitution, to recover fugitive slaves. In fact I think there was at least one SCotUS ruling to that effect which has never been seriously disputed.
During the first sentence, I thought this was going to be about the Heller decision.
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