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Supreme Court Justice Marshall, in a 1982 case, unwittingly quoted the theme of the Virginia Slave Code said, "It would have been cheaper still to have shot the defendant at the time of his arrest." It is startling and dismaying to hear Justices discuss matters of life and death in terms of money. Despite lip service to the doctrine of equal protection of the laws, the courts have in effect put a price tag on justice.
The case of Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), 19 How. 393, was an action of trespass vi et armis - a remedy for injuries accompanied with force or violence - brought in the Circuit Court for the District of Missouri by Scott, alleging himself to be a citizen of Missouri, against Sandford, a citizen of New York. Defendant pleaded to the jurisdiction that Scott was not a citizen of the State of Missouri, because a Negro of African descent, whose ancestors were imported as Negro slaves. Plaintiff demurred to this plea and the demurrer was sustained; whereupon, by stipulation of counsel and with leave of the court, defendant pleaded in bar the general issue, and specially that the plaintiff was a slave and the lawful property of defendant, and, as such, he had a right to restrain him. The wife and children of the plaintiff were also involved in the suit. The facts in brief were, that plaintiff had been a slave belonging to Dr. Emerson, a surgeon in the army; that, in 1834, Emerson took the plaintiff from the State of Missouri to Rock Island, Illinois, and subsequently to Fort Snelling, Minnesota, (then known as Upper Louisiana,) and held him there until 1838. Scott married his wife there, of whom the children were subsequently born. In 1838 they returned to Missouri. It was held that he was not included under the words "citizens" in the Constitution, and therefore could claim "none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States;" that it did not follow because he had all the rights and privileges of a citizen of a State, he must be a citizen of the United States; that no State could by any law of its own "introduce a new member into the political community created by the Constitution;" that the African race was not intended to be included, and formed no part of the people who framed and adopted the Declaration of Independence. The question of the Status of Negroes in England and the several States was considered at great length by the Chief Justice, and the conclusion reached that Scott was not a citizen of Missouri, and that the Circuit Court had no jurisdiction of the case. The supreme law of the land did not measure justice. It measured the history, the prejudices, and the desires of the judges of the Supreme Court. Only the dignity and solemnity of the high court, their very black robes and their very starched language, hid their mortal souls from plain view. Alabama's 35% Judicial Pay Raises 1997Chief Justice: $116,775 to $157,917
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This document was last updated November 05, 1997
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